


The Odyssey

by buckyjerkbarnes



Series: the long way home [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), DC Cinematic Universe, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: (it's the events of Iron Man when Tony was in the desert and it's really vague I swear), 70 years of sleep, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Author knows nothing about the workings of MIT, Author uses google maps for the set up of things, Battle of New York (Marvel), Bucky Barnes Needs ALL THE HUGS, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes is the Public Servant We Deserve, Bucky Sees a Thing and Writes to the New York Times, Bucky gets the metal arm but it's Tony that builds it, Bucky is not taken by Hydra, Canon-Typical Violence, Cuddling, Diana is a Bad Ass, Family of Choice, Feelings, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Implied Underage Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kissing, M/M, Reunion, September 11 Attacks, Steve Trevor Lives, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt (brief in chapter 4), Travel, Underage Drinking, Vietnam War, You take the boy out of New York but he'll always come home, aids epidemic, basically bucky and diana are sad immortal bros who appreciate and respect each other, bc there needs to be, because I AM a tool, bucky is #amazed by diana's invisible plane, but boy is the road LONG, canon loss of limb, it's canon bc Tony had a wild young adulthood, mention of medical procedure, so is there a tag for slow-burns when they're already together...????, this is a war story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-07-26 22:38:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 78,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7592938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckyjerkbarnes/pseuds/buckyjerkbarnes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"No," Diana murmured, "we fight to protect the men, women and children who are suffering uselessly under the thumbs of infantile dictators. Those men are not leaders—they are whining children, bullies to those who hold less power than them."</p><p>If Steve were awake, Bucky knew damn well he'd have hearts in his eyes. </p><p>He wasn't the only one who seemed to be having the same series of thoughts as Monty breathed: "My god, there are two of them." </p><p> </p><p>[Alternatively known as "The Frisbee Friends" for Diana and Steve set to be future shield-bros. Ranges from 1944 to 2011.]<br/>*Note: chapters 1-6 were all written before the release of Wonder Woman (2017)<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Achilles

**Author's Note:**

> Be gentle with me, guys: this is the first DC fan-fic I've ever done. When I was a kid, Diana was my absolute favorite superhero /ever/. Like, I had the original WW tv series, I had action figures and dolls and all the Justice League/Justice League Unlimited cartoons. To see her back, in her own up-coming feature film for that matter... Five year old me is just constantly in tears. Don't screw this up, DC. I'll actually fight you.
> 
> And because I have two actual books I should be working on for summer reading with AP Lit, I decided to throw my attention on this~ 
> 
> ENJOY!!

_1944_

_Munich, Germany._

_*_

The camp was doubling as a Hydra experimental lab, as though Schmidt was looking for reasons for the rest of the world to hate them. From even ten miles out, they'd picked up on the smell of burning flesh, of the billows of smoke from a chimney that were not smoke, but ash and it all sent the hairs on the back of Bucky’s neck raising. It took a great deal of self-control to keep from vomiting in horror: when he chanced a glance to his right, Steve had not appeared to be in any better shape than he was.

The facility was large, boxed in with tall walls of barbed wire and metal posts. A line of wooden barracks was wedged into the far back corner, a small communal bathroom area more or less a stinking ditch dug jaggedly in the earth. A gate at the front was made of strong iron, a line of train tracks cutting through the grounds and coming out the opposing end of the camp. There were four guard stations, one at each corner of the grounds, two in either post near the main gate, one in each post at the rear. The main building was a solemn, slate-grey of all concrete: according to the blue-prints that Peggy had plucked from the desk of one of the Nazi higher-ups, a majority of the going-ons were underground, which did not surprise Bucky in the least. Their briefing with Phillips the day before revealed that the people being held here were Jewish folk who’d been randomly chosen from other various concentration camps in the area and that the experiments would make even Dr. Mengele cringe.

Bucky, pointedly, did not think of the images they’d been shown. He had enough trouble sleeping as it was.

Their orders to extract the innocent and take down anyone with a swastika slash red skull pin, but they were never _not_ told to avoid  _burning the whole god damn facility to the fucking ground_. Frenchie was packing something special to blow the place to kingdom come and looked pretty damn happy about it, too.

Dum-Dum was with Jim and Monty, set to take the backside of the facility and rush in, guns blazing; Deriner and Mortia were on evacuation duty, to heard all the prisoners around to the open block of land near where the train stops and prisoners are likely unloaded, doubling back to lay their bombs and wait for the clear to blow; Steve was coming in through the front like dumb star-spangled target he believed himself to be, braining the enemy with his shield and sweeping for others who may not be so easy to locate. Bucky, though? He got himself comfortable on the incline some five hundred yards away, quickly assembling his rifle and shaking out a black blanket to immerse himself in shadow as he waited: he was to pick off any stragglers, anyone who may try and turn their guns on the prisoners while Frenchie and Gabe set up shop.

He looked through his scope and saw Dum-Dum clipping away at the barbed wire, Jim gripping the radio under his arm with Monty smoking a cigarette, face smoothed over and calm as he gripped at his gun.

“Alright, Barnes,” Jim said, his voice coming out low and tinny over the radio near Bucky’s feet. “ _Now._ ”

Bucky shouldered his rifle, swiveling his gun to the black-clad guard nearest to Jim’s corner. He took a breath. He took the shot, moving quickly to reload and take out the other guard. Dum-Dum slipped in, using a hankie to hold up the flaps of sharp wire so Jim and Monty could slip through. He allowed himself a moment to watch them, to ensure they were unharmed before moving double-time.

The guards at the front went down just as easy, leaving the camp open for Steve to burst in through the iron gate, Gabe and Frenchie on his heels. The latter two fanned out, a black bag bounced against Frenchie’s back, packed to the brim with explosives, no doubt.

Bucky watched Steve through the scope, following his movements all the way up until he brought his shield down on the massive lock keeping the facility sealed up. He let the angle of his sights drop to see the curve of Steve’s ass clutched by that dark blue fabric. If things went smoothly, he was going to ask Steve if he could peal him out of the suit with his teeth once they were safely back at their base. He was only human.

(He wasn’t sure if he was completely human anymore.

Because he and Steve were both professionals at taking their feelings and shoving them in places where they’d never see the light of day, Bucky decided to cut that thought off at the root before he could think on it for too long.)

This was the boring part, honestly, the sitting and the waiting, trying not to fidget too much when he felt a pinecone jabbing into his sternum. He took out a trio of goons that had slipped onto the roof, watching them jerk and fumble their glowing weapons before they could be turned on any of the Commandos.

He reloaded.

He kept scanning the grounds, sucking his teeth when a small, muffled explosion came from within the compound. _Steve, I swear before Christ if you blew yourself up…_ His state of mind was only slightly calmed when he remembered Dum-Dum, Jim and Monty would be there to make sure Steve didn’t do anything _too_ stupid or, in the very least, drag him out.

Bucky’s attention was captured by movement from the barracks. Weary lines of people started to emerge, swaying like thin willow branches in the cool, autumn air. Bucky felt a sweep of horror at the sight of their sheered heads, their thin, thin bodies where more bones were visible than anything else, at the fact he could not tell a difference between the men or the women, the young or the old. Gabe was speaking quietly, gently to them, Frenchie smiling so softly and pitching his voice low as to not startle.

None of these beaten folk deserved this. They didn’t deserve any of _this._ He thought of his parents, how they’d stopped going to synagogue and had avoided celebrating Passover and Hanukkah the year before Bucky shipped out, despite everyone on their street knowing what religion they practiced.

Bucky wanted to march right into the heart of Berlin and shove his rifle up Adolf Hitler’s ass, empty a few rounds in him: he’d find Schmidt next, save that sniveling fucker Zola for last. That way, he’d _know_ who was coming.

He shook the dark thought away, clenching his jaw to refocus. Frenchie and Gabe had drifted away from the congregation of the ill, setting up shop in that eager way of theirs. Bucky cracked a smile, knowing Frenchie would be babbling in his native tongue about how glorious the explosion was when they sat down around a fire later in the evening; Dum-Dum would make a pyromaniac joke; Steve would jab a ‘Cap is Disappointed in YOU’ finger at them both, biting back a large, blinding grin.

(And when they returned to their tent, once the others dozed off, he’d kiss that grin right off Steve’s dumb mug.)

He was doing another sweep for any signs of enemy movement when the ground shuddered and there was an explosion of glass, heat ripping out the windows and sending billowing columns of smoke in the air. The new part of him, the chunk that frog-looking doctor had carved into Bucky’s veins, had no problem in tasting the sharp bite of nitroglycerin. 

Bucky scrambled for the radio. “What the fuck was that?” he hissed.

Jim sounded just as frantic as Bucky did. “It wasn’t us! It came from inside the facility.” As though to emphasize this statement, Frenchie was waving his hands in the universal gesture of _I’m so damn lost right now not even a divine map could get me on course again_.

“God damnit,” Bucky snapped, seizing his rifle to search for any signs of tall, blond and stupid in the midst of the destruction. He jabbed a finger at the radio, bringing the mic to his mouth. “Does anyone have eyes on Steve?”

“Negative, Sarge,” Dum-Dum breathed. And, like an afterthought, he added: “The rest of us are clear.”

“God _damn_ it.”

He packed up all of his gear with a swiftness that he’d never had before the war, before he was dosed up with some sort of enhancing cocktail in the belly of a Hydra lab, clambering down the hill and bursting through foliage, slapping tree branches out of his way. He didn’t feel the sharp wood slice open his palms, nor did he detect the small cuts he gained on his face. There was no point in being discreet, not with the world glowing a fierce orange, snarling and crackling in the night.

Bucky plowed through the front gates just as the roof of the facility caved in.

His heart did something similar, collapsing on itself like a dying star—hot and explosive and toxic—

“Steve!” he screamed, pitching his bag aside in the dirt as he took off towards the heart of the camp. “ _Steve_!”

“Woah!” Dum-Dum seized him around the middle, hauling Bucky off his feet like he was a particularly squirmy sack of flour. “Hold your horses, will you? There he is now.”

There was, indeed, a figure emerging quickly from the fire. He went limp, a wet towel damp with relief. Dum-Dum didn’t release him until the shape had solidified and he only did that much out of shock.

It was not Steve.

“Well I’ll be damned,” Gabe whispered.

It was a woman, lithe and dark haired with olive skin like the Greeks in his and Steve’s neighborhood and she was carrying Steve in her arms like he’s a bride, his shield carefully laid over his chest. She’s wearing this gold, scarlet and cobalt getup and doing it all with a sword at her hip and in one inch heels, a shield of her own hanging off her arm. Though she’d just walked out of a flaming building, her face was not the least bit smudged with grime, perfectly clear. Perfectly at ease, as if she did this sort of thing every week.

“Who is she?” Monty murmured out the corner of his mouth, falling in at Bucky’s right.

“I don’t know,” Dum-Dum said, low and a touch dreamy. “But I want her on my team.”

Bucky strode forward, trying to maintain an air of dignity and coolness as he met the woman in the middle and helped her lower Steve to the earth. Her eyes were brown, large and intelligent. He had no idea what to say to her and settled on a wide-eyed: “Thank you.”

She studied him in that way that Peggy did, like she was looking into the very pulp of your soul, searching for just a moment, before pulling away. The woman nodded, seemingly content at what she found in Bucky. She shed a pack from her shoulders and dropped it near Steve’s feet.

“Those are all the files he managed to collect before someone triggered the detonation process.” He could not place her accent, but it was soft and her hand touched lightly at Bucky’s shoulder as she strode away, right through the Commandos and to the shaking prisoners across the lot.

Steve had a huge, gaping wound in his belly, but he was breathing and that was all that mattered. He touched the pulse point right under Steve’s jaw and felt the beat beneath his digits flutter only for Bucky stomach to seize at the sight of so much blood. He stripped out of his jacket to try and staunch the flow of red. “Mortia!” he barked without turning away from Steve. “I need that fancy medical training of yours right now!”

As though he’d teleported, Mortia was suddenly bracketing Steve’s other side, gently tugging away the tattered pieces of the tricolored uniform where the flow of blood was the strongest. “Shit,” Morita swore. “He’s got shrapnel imbedded in his abdomen.” A moment more of probing, a hard wince that twisted Mortia’s expression. “And a couple of broken ribs.”

“How much can you do here?” he pressed.

“Here,” Monty appeared at Bucky’s three o’clock, thrusting an object forth. “Use my torch.”

Bucky nodded at him, holding aside the ripped pieces of fabric and gripping the flashlight between his teeth. Mortia was very quick to start pouring iodine and using a delicate pair of tweezers to remove bits and pieces from inside Steve. “The ribs shouldn’t be that big of a problem,” Mortia told him. “He heals quickly. Should be fine in a day, maybe two.”

(Technically, none of the Commandos were supposed to know that Steve had been doped up with some sort of serum.

Bucky supposed they wouldn’t if Steve didn’t throw himself into progressively more dangerous situations where he was visibly injured.)

“It’s gonna be okay,” he murmured softly, using the hand that was the least dirty to brush Steve’s feathery hair off his forehead. “You’re gonna be fine.”

Bucky hadn’t even heard the pounding footsteps of the five guards who’d apparently escaped from a fiery death and likely wouldn’t have noticed them had it not been for what happened next:

The woman had unsheathed her sword in a flash, easy as breathing, and had quite literally flung her own shield so hard, it knocked one guard out of his boots and into the still-blazing building. She wasted no time in retrieving her shield, sparing it only the briefest of glances as it rolled some twenty yards away from where she was running the second guard through, a bastardized kebab.

She leapt out the path of one of those atomizing rays, doing an elegant pair of back flips before she rolled once and came up with her shield braced on her forearm. When the three remaining guards squared their shoulders, rounding on her with their guns aimed, she _smiled_ , huge and feral.

Suddenly, Peggy Carter seemed like a little girl who played with dolls rather than the brazen, powerful dame who shot Steve, point blank, to express just how angry she was.

Bucky, if he didn’t have Steve, would have fallen in love on the spot.

None of the Commandos moved to offer their assistance: hell Frenchie _whistled_ when the woman roundhouse kicked the fourth goon to the ground and ran him through with her sword. When it was just her and a final, straight-backed guard who could not hide the trembling in his hands no matter how hard he tried, Bucky turned his eyes back to Steve, having a pretty clear idea of what was done given the wet pair of separate thumps.

The silence was punctuated only by the fire smacking its lips and growling for more. The woman had fallen out of her defensive stance, putting away her sword and hooking her shield to her back. She stepped over the bodies without doing any further damage to them—like stamping on them, spitting on their frozen, fearful faces. She moved carefully, gingerly, almost, back towards the prisoners.

She spoke fluent Yiddish, trying for an air of a gentle mother. Though Bucky’s parents had taught him the Jewish tongue a long time ago, he picked out strings of calming words, things like _you’re all safe now_ and _I shall not allow any harm to come to any of you._

One man stepped forth. The only clothes on him were a set of stripped, pale blue cotton pajamas. His feet were bare and ivory and turning blue. “ _Are you a golem_?” he wondered softly, coughing immediately after.

The woman smiled. “ _No, although I was shaped from clay._ ”

“Who  _are_ you?” Gabe blurted and when the woman focused her attention on him, he stammered out an eloquent  _ma’am_.

“I am Princess Diana of Themyscira,” she said in that same no-nonsense manner she’d operated under thus far. Bucky kind of liked her already and it wasn’t just because her stems looked good as hell in those red boots, either.

 _Princess._ Bucky had read his sisters fairy tales about princesses and none of them ever fought so viciously, never waded out into the center of a battle so willingly. In _Snow White & the Seven Dwarves, _Snow had done little more than sing a sweet tune and sleep through the seasons.

This was a refreshing change in such a predictable pattern.

“I had left the isolation of home when a friend of mine caught wind of this base and I was in the middle of dismantling it when that one—,” a tip of her head at Steve, at the pile of bloody metal resting in the dirt beside him, “—arrived and triggered the switch to send everything up in flames. Men of this age are more violent than I’ve ever seen, more willing to subject the weak to their primitive acts of torture and slavery.”  

There was a beat, then—

"Erm, m'lady?" Dum-Dum asked, raising his hand like a kid in school would to get the teacher's attention. Diana glanced at him, brow lifted. "If you, uh, can't stand what, um, men have done to the world, why are you...?" 

She seemed to have held an answer for that, just waiting for someone to prompt her: "Why do you all fight? Why does anyone hike this terrain and carry weapons and leave their families for?" 

"To win the war," Mortia said, sounding a great deal more confident than his body language would suggest. 

"No," Diana murmured, "we fight to protect the men, women and children who are suffering uselessly under the thumbs of infantile dictators. Those men are not leaders—they are whining children, bullies to those who hold less power than them."

If Steve were awake, Bucky knew damn well he'd have hearts in his eyes. 

He wasn't the only one who seemed to be having the same series of thoughts as Monty breathed: "My god, there are two of them." 

*

They did not want to put anyone on a train, not what with the information they’d gathered about cramped cattle cars and standing for days on end before being dumped in a hell hole so Bucky radioed their base about sending some sort of plane that could tote them to a hospital in Switzerland.

“Do you think they even have the resources for this many people?” Gabe wondered softly.

Dum-Dum made a dismissive noise. “I dunno, but I think between the seven of us, we can intimidate Stark into making a donation or twelve to help out.”

“Seconded,” Monty and Mortia chorused.

Diana had disappeared through the front gates some twenty minutes ago and arrived on the back of a brilliant white stallion, bridled with the same sort of gold metal that formed the bird over her breasts, the tiara on her head. She galloped right up to them, where they loitered around Bucky, still holding Steve, and said: “I have three options for you all to consider: I can call in a few allies to administer the proper care of these people, I can stand guard while you all return to your base, or I can go and take your injured to your base so his wounds don’t worsen.”

“Um,” Frenchie said.

“We’ve already got support coming in: we’ll be taking everyone to a Swiss hospital.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Do you have supplies for such a flow of people?”

“We’ve got that covered, too.”

Diana nodded. “Well, then that narrows our choices down to two.”

Bucky lifted his head, ripping his gaze from the field dressing over the gasping wound in Steve’s belly. He shared a silent conversation with the Commandos just using his eyes, the others throwing in small shakes of their heads or tiny, barely-there grunts.

“We’re set up ten miles from the Luxemburg borders,” Bucky finally said.

She took that into stride as though she’d been expecting far worse. “I can have him there before dawn.”

This launched them carefully lifting Steve so he was slumped into Diana’s front, one of her toned arms curled around his midsection to keep him steady, her other hand gripping the reins of her steed. Bucky gripped one of the curves of Steve’s shield, white-knuckling it now that he didn’t have a warm body to clutch.

“Take care of him,” Bucky said in a small voice.

Diana nodded. “So long as you ensure the safety of _them_.” She made a pointed gesture to the barracks which were far away enough from the cooling heap of ashes to be out of danger, where the prisoners had retreated against the lowering temperatures of the night.

“We will,” he swore.

She gave him another one of those soul-searching looks, a slight smile ticking up the corners of her mouth for half a second. Diana clicked her tongue, bringing her mighty companion to attention, turning the stallion’s body in the direction of the gates. They were off.

The stallion was going far quicker than Bucky was completely comfortable with, but he didn’t utter a word about it. Dum-Dum did it for him: “ _Wow_.”

 

-

 

_Luxembourg._

_*_

Bucky made a nuisance of himself, positively mother-henning over Steve like he was still ninety pounds and made of delicate bird-bones. He dabbed a cool rag along his furrowed brow, checked the wound in his belly more times than was probably necessary. Touching along the side of Steve’s neck, he felt at his pulse again, finding it much stronger and steadier. Upon further examination, one of the doctor’s found Steve had also shattered his wrist and nearly dislocated his shoulder, both of which were splinted or set once Steve was loaded up with enough knock-out juice to keep down an elephant.

This particular medical tent was for Steve and Steve only: the US government wanted to keep a tight grip on how much people knew about Project Rebirth and their only test subject. Steve’s self-sacrificing streak ran a mile long and was equally wide—he was a frequent visitor of this tent and the nurses trusted Bucky to keep him from killing over, allowing them to shoot off to places where they likely felt genuinely needed.

Being alone, just the two of them, allowed Bucky to be a bit riskier. He could card his fingers through Steve’s hair, here. He could dip in to briefly kiss Steve’s jaw or run a lazy thumb over Steve’s full lower lip.

He was in the process of doing the latter when the stagnant air of the tent shifted, bringing in a biting burst of cold. Bucky pulled his hand away so quickly, his limb blurred.

Diana had tied her hair back in a bun, having pulled on a neat, deep blue dress that contrasted gorgeously against her olive skin and her dark hair, a tan coat draped over her arm. A pair of round-framed glasses were perched on the bridge of her nose: Bucky didn’t think she needed them.

“You may continue,” she said, flicking her eyes between Bucky’s bloodless face and the sleeping lump Steve made under the scratchy, wool blankets. “I was raised on an island of all women. I have seen love before, but never like this. It’s…,” Diana stopped, looking suddenly grave.

Bucky was caught: she’d seen his expression split wide open with adoration, his tender touches. Steve had taught him to never walk away from a fight, or perhaps they’d learned that lesson together and simply interpreted its core a bit differently. “Ma’am, have you got something against queers?”

Diana shook her head and it took a great deal of strength for Bucky to control his surprise. “As I said, James—I was raised on an island of all women. I have seen bonded women before, who care for each other just as any man and woman might, just as a man might a man.”

Bucky narrowed his eyes, just slightly. From the experiences he’d heard of in the past, of special bars raided with police clubbing and beating those who’d been unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, of men being stabbed in alleys for trying to earn a quick buck sucking someone off. Bucky had learned to expect some sort of catch. _She’ll probably have me court marshaled the moment she walks out._

Still, even as his thoughts twisted into frantic knots, his mouth moved, prompting: “Then why did you cut yourself off a second ago?”

She huffed a laugh, straightening her glasses a mere millimeter. “Because I was going to make an unfortunate analogy.”

That strummed his curiosity something fierce. “ _How_ unfortunate?”

Another not-laugh, more sober this time. Her dark eyes met his and Bucky felt like he was being observed by an age-old God rather than a woman who could be no older than he and Steve… right? Diana’s mouth was settled into a thin, flat line. “Have you heard of the legend of Achilles?”

“Yeah,” Bucky confirmed. “Steve and I had to do a couple of readings on Homer in school.”

“Then you’ll have heard of Patroclus.”

“Rings a bell, yeah.”

Diana’s gaze flicked from Bucky’s face to Steve’s. It settled there as she continued: “Historians would argue that the two were like brothers, but time twists things, James. They were not brothers, though they might have begun with such a label—they were lovers.”

There was an askance poking at him, nudging him in the gut. He could not silence it. “What happened to them?”

“Achilles was golden and strong—and stubborn. There was a series of incidents that turned Achilles from wanting to fight for the Greeks and so he kept his men from entering any sort of battle out of spite. The Trojans were closing in, though, and, willing to do anything to keep his dearest one safe, Patroclus took Achilles’ armor and impersonated him, battling valiantly and killing many. He was slain, though and Achilles took the man who killed him and tied him to his chariot, dragging him until he was not recognizable as a man at all out of grief for his stolen beloved. Achilles did not last much longer.”

Bucky had felt the blood run from his face, sinking down his neck and his limbs and gathering in a hot clot behind his ribs and around his heart, pressing on all sides, but when Diana uttered that last line,  _Achilles did not last much longer_ , he thought he might  _burst_. “Oh,” he whispered faintly. “I see why it’s unfortunate now.”

Diana did not look impressed. “Men are too curious for their own good. It is why the world is in tatters.”

He wanted to snap that he’d gotten drafted and hadn’t wanted a part of this fucking war, that he’d much rather be lifting crates from dawn to dusk and heading over his to parents on Saturdays after synagogue for dinner with his three little sisters and then home to Steve. He wanted to tell her all that he wanted was to curl up in his and Steve’s shoebox apartment with the faulty radiator that worked in the summer and busted at the first sign of winter. But he couldn't bring himself to say any of those things because Steve was stirring, his eyelids fluttering with the first sign of movement _and_ because Diana did not deserve words that held a harsh bite when she appeared just as tired as Bucky was. 

"Buck," Steve slurred, tipping his face into the hand Bucky curled along his cheek. 

"I'm here. It's me. You're alright, Steve. It's okay. We're okay." 

She loitered in the V of the tent flaps, watching him with those old, old eyes. He wanted to hug her, for some inexplicable reason. “If there comes a time when he has been brought to his knees, do not put on his armor: do not try to be him.” Diana pressed her lips together, let them fall into a flat line. At her hip, that glowing rope coiled up along her thigh flared gold. "No matter how much you wish to." 

When he managed to rip his attention away from Steve, she was gone.

 

-

 

_1945_

_The Alps, Germany._

_*_

When he scooped up Steve's shield and emptied his clip into the chest of the Hydra goon, and when he flew out the side of the freight car, holding onto a trembling piece of metal with Steve so close and yet still so far away; when he saw the horror in Steve's eyes as the metal hanger gave out and his arms began to pin-wheel wildly, a wordless scream ripping out of his throat, Bucky had a single thought:  _I should have fucking listened to the Princess._

 


	2. Hades

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky wasn't dead.
> 
> (Why wasn't he dead?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, kids, prepare for some angst... and a rescue mission.

 

_London._

*

Steve wasn't sure what was worse: hand-writing the whole  _we regret to inform you_ letter to Bucky's folks with an entire subsection smeared from the vicious, salty tears tripping out of his eyes; the fact that each time his body tried to give out and lapse into a coma-like state, Bucky's pale face falling away from him was  _there,_ hanging behind his eyelids; or, finally, that there was no body to bury, nothing to put in a standard wooden box and ship back to Brooklyn.

(It's a combination, surely. There were no lesser of two evils. Not here. Not in this situation.)

His tent was so lonely, without the Bucky to fill the spaces. He’d carefully packed all of Buck’s things into a metal trunk, untucking the photo of the two of them, pre-War, young and so fucking clueless as to what was coming a few years down the line, from the lining and slide it into his breast-pocket. He kept the knife Bucky used sometimes on missions, a small, dangerous thing that had **_THOUGH I WALK THROUGH THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH I SHALL FEAR NO EVIL_** on one side and **_FOR I AM THE EVILEST MOTHERFUCKER IN THE VALLEY_** carved into the other.

It wouldn’t be so bad, still, if it wasn’t for…

The thing is—the thing  _is_ : Steve saw Bucky fall. 

But he didn't  _feel_ it. 

Ever since he and Bucky had met, Bucky scooping him up and dusting him off, the pair of them eight and seven respectively, the dark headed man had secured a solid, warm weight in Steve's chest. He'd tried to explain it to Bucky, once: 

_"It's like... like when you're around, I'm closer to God," Steve murmured, brushing a digit along the sharp line of Bucky's jaw. He had beautiful features: a straight nose, even teeth, a perfect cupid's bow perched atop his plush mouth, a wide, smooth forehead, that dimpled chin where Steve would rest his thumb and hook a finger under his chin to haul him in. Steve could draw him all day, every day, and never run out of ideas. "You make all my empty spaces whole. Sometimes it's like I've got a bird in my belly and whenever you touch me, it starts to flutter around."_

_Bucky flattened a hand on Steve's stomach, trailing lower, gently, teasingly, as he dipped in to smash a playful kiss to the line of Steve's neck. "Oh good," he hummed. "It's not just me, then."_

They were two halves of a being who’d miraculously found each other in such a terrible world and Steve could no nothing with that information anymore but wallow in it, wrap himself up in it like a funeral shroud.

It struck him, like lightning cutting through the center of an old, grand tree, that he’d never hear Bucky’s laugh again, or taste him early in the morning before the rest of the world even saw their faces, or share a meal with him, or embrace him, hell, be embraced _by_ him. Steve closed his eyes tightly, forcing himself to recall the color of Bucky’s eyes no matter how it speared him.

(Silver in the sun, blue in the shade, a stellar mix of both when he looked at Steve.)

He should have known that something of this sort would happen—wars were not won without casualties, after all. They’d been so fortunate to have not lost any men in their unit for the two and a half years they spent running around all over Europe.

Steve should have known.

He should have taken the fall, instead.

*

Bucky wasn't dead.

(Why wasn't he dead?) 

He couldn't feel anything below the neck, could see that there was a river of blood and ripped sinew where his arm once was, but he was not dead. If he were, he bet it would be warmer and the sky wouldn't be that awful, washed-out gray of winter. He’d be whole, curled up in bed with Steve beside him.

There would be no war, there would be no cold, and, most importantly, there would be no one to frown upon them for loving each other.

He hoped, in the very least, it was Steve who told his parents what happened. Steve had been a permanent fixture among the Barnes since they were both just out of the age of being considered ankle biters: he had been around when Alice and Grace were born _and_ had been there through all of Rebecca’s childhood. He would know how to break it to them, all the while trying his best not to make them hurt too badly.

And it wasn’t like Bucky knew he wouldn’t make it home.

By no means had he been looking for a sword to fall on or a bullet to run into, but, ever since Steve asked him to join up with the rest of their rag-tag group, Bucky had been unable to shake the feeling that he was going to die in battle. This intuition or what have you had only grown in strength when Diana fed him that Grecian myth back in the medical tent at the start of winter.

“Смотри! Там!” He was startled by the new sound—a voice. No, a series of voices all speaking in a tongue that Bucky had only heard in passing. If he had to wager a guess, he’d flip a coin and call their language Russian.

The soft crunches of snow under boots started up and came closer, carefully fell in on either side of him and tossed the white light bouncing between the sky and the snow and his eyes into shadow. He looked at them, at their red faces and their plain grey uniforms and their trapper hats and he blinked. Or, he tried to blink at least. He felt snow twitch in his eyelashes.

“Упал с проходящего поезда может быть?” the other replied grimly.

A third man, equally red-faced approached from around Bucky’s head, peering down at him with only the slightest hint of sympathy. It was he who squatted down, his uniform chuffing slightly as he moved. His hands were rough when they tugged open Bucky’s jacket and searched around his neck, hooking around Bucky’s dogtags. The soldier grunted triumphantly, never cracking any sort of expression.

“Бедный ублюдок...,” the first voice said.

“Бедный американский ублюдок,” the newest arrival seemed to correct in a graveling tone, putting a heavy emphasis on the second word.

The first two grunted near-simultaneously, all traces of sympathy promptly wiped away as though they’d never been there at all.

Bucky was seized by the pair of soldier’s who’d first spotted him, speaking so low, now, that even if Bucky _did_ understand their mother tongue, he’d not have a snowball’s chance in hearing what it was they had to say. Other voices joined in, too, and, after what had to be at least five or ten minutes, he was able to count at least seven individuals based on the heaviness of footsteps and the volume of their breathing. Bucky didn't make a sound as he was dragged by the collar of his coat, ruined to the point not even the best seamstress could mend it—the cold took away all feeling, and he didn’t think he could make his throat form words, anyway.

Besides: he didn’t know a lick of Russian besides _nyet_ and he didn’t think that would get him too far.

The sky was white. There were no birds. There was nothing living out here—he was half dead, anyway, just loitering on Death’s door: he didn’t count.

His eyes fluttered closed as focusing on one point for too long made his head ache.

Bucky had no idea how long he was pulled along, his body occasionally jerking from hitting a particularly rocky patch padded only with a few inches of snow or shaking from hypothermia. There was sweat on his brow. His stomach felt hollow. He couldn’t feel his heart beating, but he knew it must be doing _something,_ otherwise…

Otherwise, he’d have to determine an alternative and he didn’t have the energy to spare for that.

“Что в—?” one of them said sharply, before yelling out in pain and dropping Bucky roughly into the snow.

 _This is fine,_ Bucky thought deliriously. _This is totally a-okay._

(It was not fine. He was nowhere near the lands of _fine_.)

There was a series of gunshots, causing his ears to start ringing at the close proximity. He wasn’t sure if he, himself, was shot, but he wouldn’t know anyway, would he? He let his body sink into the snow, his head lolling limply until the vicious clanging of metal and the thunder of gun fire came to a sharp close. Fingers landed on his face, falling lightly over his belly where his coat had been ripped open. Lightly, the digits touched at his throat, searching.

“Steve,” Bucky tried to whisper. _He’s come for me. He’s… He’s found me._

It was not Steve.

He’d not seen that dark hair or that uniform for nearly five months, but here it was, covering a woman who was not the least out of breath though she’d just single-handedly disarmed a handful of well-trained Soviets.

"Princess?" His mouth attempted to form the word, but he wasn't sure if she heard him. 

Her eyes were solemn and round, her mouth dipping open in shock. "Where is the rest of your team?" 

Bucky blinked at her. Time had passed so slowly, molasses oozing over a block of ice. It had been the tail end of February when they zip-lined onto that train and he’d not been able to keep track of much of anything, besides. The rumbling locomotive would have been stopped, surely, with Steve and the Commandos taking Zola prisoner back to London. But a trip like that would take days, too. His mouth wouldn't move, the cold had won.

The princess made a soft sound in her throat, snapping her fingers so his eyes were drawn to them. "You have severe damage to your arm," she told him calmly, brushing a cool digit along the side of his mouth. When she retracted her hand, her fingertips were painted red. “I need to get you somewhere safe for immediate medical attention. Do you trust me?”

He wasn’t sure if the muscles in his face moved, but he tried to shoot her a _look_ , one that said _I really don’t have any other options, do I_? Diana made a soft noise, shrugging off the dark cape made from some sort of silken wool to wrap him up like a swaddled child. She was careful of his arm.

The world went white as she scooped him up and took off at a dead sprint.

*

(He came to briefly in a small medical bay. He didn’t dare look down at his arm and thanked whoever heard his inner thoughts that he couldn’t feel anything below the neck, even as his bones were warm and his head was the lightest it’d been in months. When Bucky blinked, tipping his face upward, he saw clouds streaking by in fat, white blurs.

When he blinked again, thinking it to be some sort of pain-induced hallucination, the sky was stretching a deep, unmarred China blue above him.

Bucky tugged the blanket that had been draped around his hips over his head and passed out again.)

*

As they worked out a plan to infiltrate Schmidt’s beloved Alpine base, there was a seat left empty to Steve’s right.

No one dared to fill it. None of them trusted him not to flip out.

He was at the top of that list.

*

He pealed open an eyelid, wincing hard against the sudden intrusion of light. "Where...?"

"My home," Diana murmured, somewhere to his right. "Try not to move: the medicine you've been given is very powerful and may cause you to have a bit of a stomach ache.”

Bucky grit his teeth because, now that she brought it to his attention, his belly felt like it was going to explode. “Could…,” he began, gathering what bit of spit pooled beneath his tongue to dampen the seam of his mouth. “Could I get some water?”

She nodded. “Of course.”

He forced his heavy eyelids to stay open, taking in his surroundings. The back part of the room was a cave-like area, as though the medical facility had been carved into some sort of mountain or cliff-face. This left the front of the area to be open and creamy, the walls smooth-looking. The mouth of the entry was perfectly rounded and it opened up into a sandy path that lead directly to the sparkling, iron sea. If he strained his sense of smell, Bucky could pick up brine and salt, so much fresher than Coney Island or even the small bodies of water they’d sometimes camped by in the European theatre. 

“Where are we?”

“Paradise Island,” Diana informed him. “Also identified by the name Themyscira. This is a divine place constructed by the goddesses of old—but,” she held a brass cup filled to the brim with cool water to his mouth, holding the back of his head so he didn’t strain himself. He nearly moaned when it rushed over his aching throat, soothing the sandpaper-rough feeling. “For geographical purposes, we are currently in the middle of the Aegean Sea, about a hundred miles off the coast of Greece.”

He nodded, the right side of his mouth lifting when she dabbed at the stay droplets of water that rolled out from between his lips. “Thank you,” Bucky said quietly.

“I would not leave a fallen warrior behind,” she said. “The question that has been pressing at me for the last few days, though, is why in the name of Hera were you laying in a ravine for a group of Soviet footmen to find?”

 _Days_? Bucky thought, feeling his eyes grow wide in his face. “How long have I…?”

Those big brown eyes of her softened. “Five days. As to how the span of time you spent laying in the snow, I have no idea.”

“We’d… we’d headed out on the twenty-first of February,” he croaked. “We were trying to capture the head scientist of Hydra—little frog-looking schmuck in charge of human experimentation and weapon’s manufacturing—and he’d been on a train that was passing through the mountains. One of the guards blew a hole in the train and…,” Bucky licked his lips again, his tongue a cold shock against his heated, over-sensitive skin. “I did the very thing you warned me not to.”

If Diana’s gaze went any softer, her eyes were going to become dollops of chocolate and melt right out of her sockets. “You picked up his shield. You got thrown off the train.”

He lowered his head, unable to look at her and the brilliant light she exuded. Someone had dressed him in a dark blue tunic fastened at the waste with a rope of silver, lacing up a pair of sandals on his feet. The size was perfect. “Yeah.”

Her hand landed firmly on the meat of his good shoulder, squeezing firmly. “You are alive,” Diana said. “Patroclus died. That is already one bone the Gods have thrown your way. Once you’ve settled in, I shall make the trip to your base and inform your beloved of your being alright.”

Bucky wasn’t exactly sure if it was allowed, her being a Princess and all, but he reached out and took her hand in his, anyway. If he got some sort of fine or sentence for it, he’d plea temporary insanity due to the drugs in his systems that he could barely detect. “Thank you,” he repeated, holding her eyes. Because his mother had not raised a manner-less heathen, Bucky pressed: “In the meantime, if there is anything you need, I will do my best to assist you, Princess.”

Diana nodded, as though she expected nothing less. “I will let you know if such a situation comes our way.” Her mouth thinned, just a bit. She looked like she had been made to eat a lemon and didn’t want to show just how bitter it tasted. “The healers did what they could for your arm. I am sorry for your loss.”

Bucky waved her down, though his full limb was practically a limp noodle, stiff and floppy from where he’d not used it in a while. He never looked at the bandage he knew to be covering the stump on his left side, though he knew he could not avoid doing so forever—he’d have to glance in a mirror sometime, whether to style his hair or shave, it was an inevitability.

He’d almost died, though. Bucky would allow himself a grace period.

 “Would you like to move to your quarters?”

He shot her a grateful smile, making to slowly stand. “Yes, please.”

They took a pair of horses up the side of a flourishing green mountain, cutting down a gorgeous stretch of beach and turning into a city that was something out of Ancient Greece and Rome. On every side of him, there were columns with intricate Corinthian leafing along the square tops and bottoms, mighty buildings that opened up to statues as large as he believed Abraham Lincoln to be in his memorial in DC staring serenely out into the light, all of the figures clad in togas and slightly wavering from bowls of sweet-smelling herbs being burned at their feet. At the sight of a coliseum, an honest to goodness _coliseum_ where he swore he heard a lion roar, Bucky let out a laugh of utter shock.

As Diana had said, once, the island was inhabited by women and women only. They were tall, muscled dames, their hair past their backsides and wearing practical, beige tunics carefully cut for their body types, golden sandals laced up their toned, tanned calves and fastened neatly over their kneecaps. A rare few walked about with breastplates and swords at their hips, and those nodded at Diana and raised bemused eyebrows at him.

Because these women were warriors and understood battle more than Bucky ever could, none of them so much as glanced at his missing arm.

In the end, they clopped to a halt on what felt like the other side of the island before an airy villa of sorts. “Is this where you’re staying, too?” he wondered.

Diana shook her head, slanting a small smile at him. “No. I’m down the surf some three hundred paces and my mother is on your other side some five hundred paces. This place is your own.”

 _Your own_ , Bucky echoed dumbly. This place could have _eaten_ his and Steve’s old apartment for lunch five times over and still had room left behind. His home for the time being was like a miniature Parthenon, all gleaming white marble and tall, graceful columns, inside of which he could see open floor space and delicate furniture—a chaise lounge, a table with a large conch sitting in the middle, a kitchenette with a hearth and a pile of wood and an aqueduct running up to the window for clean, fresh water.  Upon further investigation, he found a marble bathroom complete with a huge tub and a showerhead, a bedroom with floor to ceiling windows, a huge bed covered by soft blankets and a pair of doors that could be thrown open to let in the breeze.

“This is…,” he made a stupid circle, trying to take in everything at once. “Princess, this is too much.”

She didn’t look at all surprised by his reaction. “Would you rather make your recovery back in the healing wing?”

“I didn’t say that,” Bucky sighed, giving an incredulous shake of his head. “It just feels like I’m putting somebody out by being here.”

“No one lives in these quarters,” she said, the _and so you will now fill this vacancy_ was left out, but he caught it anyway. Diana gestured for him to follow her through the center of the structure, right out the back and onto his own private beach. He squatted to undo the ties of the sandals, cursing softly when his balance threatened to fail him and he nearly crashed head-first into the sand. Diana was at his side in an instant, though, and saved him from complete and utter embarrassment as she held him steady. She didn’t offer to help undo the ties, of which he was grateful.

(Bucky had no doubt, the moment she left, he would have a huge meltdown.)

The sand beneath his feet was warm and fluffy, cupping his toes. “Before I leave, I’ll take you to the dining hall,” she claimed, falling in beside him as he stood close near the surf, close enough for the warm waves to kiss his toes, but not enough for him to truly become soaked. “I wouldn’t want you to starve.”

“That’s good,” Bucky said, huffing a mirthless laugh. “I don’t know if your friends would appreciate me poking around all over the place.”

She advised him not to go into any temple, but he could go out and about to markets as he pleased and Diana also promised that she would introduce him to her mother, Queen Hippolyta, so he would have someone to ask any questions he may have. Bucky wondered if she was anything like the Queen of England, all proper and demure, or if she was as fierce as her daughter and ever wielded a sword and shield in battle.

He didn’t think on that. Bucky watched the sun sink lower into the sky, a golden dot pulled down by the hook of the tides.

*

Steve wasn’t going to make it out of this one.

He didn’t plan to. He had already gone and basically sold his soul to the US government: with his heart gone, laying broken and frozen in a ravine at the base of a mountain, he wasn’t worth much anymore.

He was nothing.

*

Diana made to leave the following morning, just as gulls were starting to cry out over the horizon and settle on their perches along the slanting rooftops. She was dressed in a white blouse and a black skirt that stopped around the middle of her calves, a pair of practical heels held in her hands as they walked side-by-side. Her hair had been swept up into a neat, low knot along the back of her skull. “How did you get me here?”

Diana smiled. “Do you like science fiction, James?”

Bucky realized that he’d never formally given her his name and winced, guessing that she’d found that out from looking at his dog tags, just as the Soviet foot-soldiers had. “I do,” he told her, unable to keep from flushing with shame. “And you can call me Bucky, ma’am.”

She hummed, not the least put out by the childish quality of the nickname. “Bucky,” Diana repeated, testing the word on her tongue. Her accent made it softer, sweeter, even. “I think you’ll enjoy this.”

They walked for maybe ten minutes, the exertion doing wonders at waking up Bucky’s muscles and shaking a bit of life back into him. His back ached a bit, as did his left shoulder and a few of his ribs, but it was not a pain that dragged him to his knees. He’d taken on far worse before, breaking up as many of Steve’s scraps as he had.

He didn’t let himself think about Steve, not in front of Diana. She’d see right through him, Bucky knew as much, and she’d say something sage and full of wisdom and he’d probably burst into snotty, boiling tears.

She took him to a lengthy silver piece of technology, a glamorous aircraft that was the length of two linked subway cars, settled some two hundred yards away from the end of a cliff. “It’s erm, nice?”

Diana laughed, but otherwise didn’t comment, slipping on her shoes. She spared a moment to ask for the address of the SSR’s headquarters once more, though he had no doubt she recalled it just fine, and he parroted it back to her. “Just wait,” she said, gesturing at the aircraft. “Just you wait.”

Bucky wanted to ask what she meant by that and refrained, enjoying the mischievous little smile she was sporting. “I should be there before noon,” Diana told him, sobering a touch. “And I’ll try to be back before the end of the week.”

“The end of the week?”

She lifted and dropped her shoulder in an elegant shrug. He was starting to doubt she could possibly do anything without a hint of grace and poise. “They could be out on a mission,” she pointed out. “And you know how long those sort of things take.”

Bucky wagered a step closer, tipping his head up just a few degrees to look into her face properly: she was around two inches taller than he, standing lithe and strong at six feet. “I cannot thank you enough for this, Princess.”

“Please,” she murmured, reaching out to clasp his hand in a firm grip. “Call me Diana.”

She climbed aboard her plane no less than a minute later, turning once to shoot a wave at him. Bucky couldn’t resist giving her a full straight-backed, feet-together, tiny-grinned salute. “Be safe!” he called after her.

“I always am!” Diana replied, shutting the door in her wake. The machine whirled to life soon after, barely making a noise as it began to roll down the flat land and tilt upward into the atmosphere. For a moment, he believed the thing she thought he’d be so impressed with was the plane’s quiet engines—oh how _wrong_ he’d been.

“Holy shit,” Bucky whispered as, before his very eyes, the plane vanished, rippling out of sight. She had a fucking _invisible plane_. “Holy _shit_!”

He loitered there like an elated eight year old, sparing a small chunk of time to try and process that. _He’d seen a guy peal his face off and found he was all red underneath: Steve is literally a walking scientific miracle. You shouldn’t be surprised anymore and yet, here we are_. Bucky let out a lungful of air he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

He just had to get an iota of his strength back and then he could, in the very least, help come up with the more tedious pieces of future missions at headquarters to try to, theoretically keep Steve’s ass out of danger. When the war wrapped up, they could use what money they’d earned from the Army to buy a nice brownstone, something warm and all their own, where they’d not have to worry about the neighbors overhearing them if they got too caught up in one another in the wee hours of the morning.

God, he just wanted to hold Steve. He hadn’t even thought to ask if Diana had a radio he could use to tap into an SSR frequency… He’d have to ask around, though from what he’d seen, Diana’s plane was the only thing _not_ out of a history book. For the meantime, he tried to focus on the positives:  

Bucky was alive—Diana’s story of fated lovers was not repeating itself.

 _It wasn’t, it wasn’t, it wasn’t,_ the line ran through Bucky’s head like an old hymn, packing a mighty weight all the while helping to purge the dark thing growing inside him. 

They were fine.

They were _safe_.

*

The wind roared, screaming past Steve’s ears as the cold air burned at his face. Peggy’s voice was calm over the coms, wavering only on every fourth word. He loved her dearly and might have loved her more, in another life, in one where Bucky Barnes did not exist.

(Steve hoped he was not reborn into such a blasphemous universe.)

He did not bother buckling his seatbelt or try to tighten his muscles to brace for impact. All he did to protect himself was slip off the pilot’s chair and curl beneath the near-wrecked control panel, wrapping his arms around his knees. Steve closed his eyes, his breath stuttering sharply through his teeth. 

He wondered if this was how Bucky felt, knowing the fall was going to happen, that there was nothing left but the ground and ice because Steve had failed to reach out for him.

Steve was going to see him, soon. Perhaps he could ask.

_I’m coming, Buck. I’m coming for you. Don’t take too long to find me, sweetheart: I don’t know if I can last another day without you._

*

She was gone for over a week.

During this time, he’d tried to edge out into Paradise Island’s social scene as it was better than smothering himself with anxiety over waiting for Diana to return, waiting for Steve to come with her. Each woman he came in contact with never so much as glanced at his injury, placing a curled fist over their heart and nodding in greeting if they passed him. A handful had become acquaintances, inviting him for meals and sharing stories of their great nation with him—never too much, though, but they seemed to trust him because Diana did and that was enough.

Diana found him sitting by the water, close enough that when the ocean exhaled, its damp breath trickled up to his ankles. The contrast between the heated air and the cool, cool water set him at ease in the way a smooth round of whiskey might. The sky was something else, though: a fierce water-color of pink and yellow and violet, fat streaks of orange left behind in the sun's wake.  _Steve would paint this,_ Bucky thought.  _He’d paint it a thousand times so the image stuck nice and strong in his memory._

 _"_ Hello," she said. There was no one with her.

Bucky climbed to his feet to properly greet her. "Hello," he countered politely. Even though she probably had bigger balls than all the boys in Brooklyn combined, she was still a dame, a Princess, too, and his Ma had ingrained good manners into his very genetic makeup. “What sort of mission did the Howlies go on that took ten days?" 

Her expression went sharp at the edges, like she'd unrolled several lengths of barbed wire in the shadows of her face, arming herself. “They launched an attack on Johann Schmidt’s base in the Alps.” Bucky shuddered. “Schmidt is dead and the device used to provide energy to his atomizing weapons has been submerged at the bottom of the Atlantic.”

He did not allow his face to show any of the rising fear that was climbing up from the bottom of his gut, using the knobs of his spine like rungs on a ladder to get closer to wrapping around his windpipe. “Good,” Bucky said neutrally. “It belongs there.”

She reached around to the small of her back and tugged out a folded newspaper.

“Your men would very much like to see you,” Diana said softly.

She had not, pointedly, mentioned Steve.

“What did he do?” he asked in a small, small voice.

Gingerly, Diana opened the paper and displayed the headline for him to see. It was from the _New York Times_ : **_CAPTAIN AMERICA DEAD! DOWNED PLANE TO PREVENT NUCLEAR DESTRUCTION OF NORTH AMERICA! SEE MORE ON PAGE 4!_**

“No,” Bucky whispered, shaking his head so hard his hair fell across his forehead from where he’d painstakingly pushed it back. “No, that’s gotta be some sort of propaganda piece. Something Hydra pushed in the papers to get a rise out of the States. That’s not _real_.”

She closed the newspaper and moved it out of his sight. She did not say a word. There was nothing that she could utter that would fix this. Diana knew that. Bucky knew it, too.

His hand flew to his throat as an unseen hand wrapped around his neck and _squeezed_ , forcing the breath from his lungs even, made worse as he tried to inhale a mouthful of oxygen. This resulted in a choked noise, low and guttural, bubbling up from within him. This was a far greater pain than laying in the snow had been, than flopping through the limbs of trees and getting his arm ripped part of the way off had been, than catching that bullet in his shoulder outside of France had been, than anything Zola did to him in that god damned lab had been. This was every broken bone, every sad song and film, every piece of bad news, every fist-fight and every loss slamming into his solar plexus at once.

“Steve,” he gasped, shuddering harshly when he managed to draw a breath. Bucky swayed further into the water, out until he was up to the bends of his knees. The tears fell before he could stop them, cutting hot, vicious streams over his cheeks. His voice was an agonized shriek when he managed to make it work again: “ _Steve_!”

The twisted feeling in his stomach returned, launching abruptly _up_ so he fell forward onto all fours, forcing out everything he’d eaten in the last eight hours. Even when his throat was scratched raw and the only taste in his mouth was copper and acid, he kept dry-heaving. Bucky never stopped shaking.   

He didn’t give a shit about keeping a strong front: piercing, animal-like sounds that sent birds shooting off into the air tore from him. Bucky fucking  _wailed._

The sea kept lapping at him gently.  

*

Somewhere in the Arctic, ice was forming a thick blanket over the broken carcass of a Nazi plane. 

Steve Rogers had a long while to sleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The bit in the start about Bucky's knife and what is says on it is an idea I admittedly copied from the much more superior fic,[The Thirteen Letters](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2689091/chapters/6016622) by dropdeaddream and WhatAreFears. Read it immediately and while you're at it, [read the whole series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/115516): it's so fantastically written and it honestly makes my heart hurt at how good it is. Do it- you'll not regret it.
> 
> The part where Bucky sees the sky and then passes out? That's because he's on Diana's Invisible Jet. I looked it up and it appeared as early as 1942 in the comics and because I didn't feel she'd just carry around the Sandals of Hermes with her whereever, I figured the Invisible Jet would be a more sensible subsitute. 
> 
> Russian translations (and since I got these from Google Translate and speak absolutely no Russian myself, feel free to correct me if I'm totally wrong!)  
> 1-Look! Over there!  
> 2- How did he get here?  
> 3- Fell from one of the passing trains, perhaps?  
> 4- Poor bastard.  
> 5- Poor American bastard...  
> 6- What the-?
> 
> If this has been too angsty for you, head over to my other fic, [Let's Get It On](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7742983), which is a meet-cute where Tony and Sam place a bet that they can find Steve the perfect partner. Basically, Steve's daughter, Sarah, takes it on herself to corner Bucky in Whole Foods and spews her own dating profile for her dad. Bucky is, to say the least, curious. 
> 
> Until next time :)


	3. Odysseus, part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The years had not been kind to him, but Bucky tried to live, if for Steve’s sake rather than his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This here, folks, is why this fic is called 'The Odyssey'. Also, I'm so, so sorry it's taken me twenty actual years to get this completed. I'm in my senior year of high school taking 3 AP course, 3 Dual Enrollment and an Honors Art course as well as the pressure of getting college applications filled out on time. So. Without further ado~~~

_New York, 1946._

_*_

Diana had told him to head to some phone company in the heart of the city and he wasn't exactly sure why this was, but he trusted her with his life and would likely be placed in a situation where he would have to do the same again in the future. He had the left arm of his suit sleeve pinned up because it was more noticeable with a limp sleeve flapping around than without.

(It was the start of March and this was the longest he’d been back stateside since he came home from Basic in ’42. He didn’t have much to come home to, now.)

He carefully filed in and moved through a neat atrium, slipping between ladies in neat, pressed dresses and off to an elevator, as also noted in Diana’s instructions. Up five floors he went, shuffling off and down to the third door on the right where a line of women were pinning wires to a circuit board, all of them speaking a mile a minute and never wavering from their job.

Bucky ambled to the end, though, touching the woman with neatly curled hair and glasses on the shoulder. She was round-faced and plump and had a very white smile. “Are you lost, sir?” the woman prompted, touching at her headset to launch another call. She moved a wire from the bottom left corner of the board up until it was almost to the top right.

“Um,” he said, carefully shifting from foot to foot. Diana hadn’t told him what to do once he had gotten his far. “I’m Sergeant James Barnes?”

The woman stared at him, eyes wide and her mouth painted a pale pink. "Hang on a sec," she said, high and strained. Bucky nodded, retracing his steps in case he had to make a brisk exit. He’d gotten better with his balance, something he was suddenly thankful for when he saw her hand sneak under the booth she worked to, presumably, press an emergency call button.

Bucky was no threat. He had one gun stashed at the small of his back, a knife in his shoe, but he did not go for either. He simply stepped out of the way of the nice gals doing their ‘job’—and he could see that most of them had some sort of handguns attached discreetly to their thighs, only seen in a few uneven lines forming from under their skirts— and curled his arm over his stomach. For something to do, he counted the number of tiles on the floor.

It took nearly a minute for a hidden door to glide up and the hurried _click-click_ - _click_ of high-heals on linoleum to sound from his left.

Peggy Carter appeared before him, bright and red-lipped and gorgeous, looking every bit of a film star as she had when he’d seen her last in London some year and a half previous. Her hair was coiffed, a small, dangerous pistol cradled between her hands that fell away the moment she met his eyes.

“Barnes?” she whispered, uncharacteristically thrown in a way that he had never witnessed.

(Had he known that Peggy was here, Bucky would not have come: they were taboo for each other, sharp, mean things that only served to hinder than to help.)

"The one and only," he said, shooting for bravado and hitting a quiet, quiet wall of grief. Bucky had not seen her since the war, hadn’t thought to send her a letter or give her a ring: he hadn’t even known she’d left England, much less made a jump across the big pond and planted her feet in New York. "If you think I'm some sort of impostor, then I'll just have to tell these gals about the little grenade story—and the whole bit with the fondue."

Her eyes blew open wide, her hands moving to tuck away her weapon into a holster at her hip."I thought you were going to wring his neck.”

Bucky blinked back a sudden wave of tears, huffing a damp laugh. The never-ending electrical noises and the _hello how may I help you today_ s from the telephone operators fell away into a white-noise resting at the far corner of his senses. It was just he and Peggy, their memories of Steve. "I would have, but that fancy serum would have just allowed him to regenerate.Probably.”

“We thought—,” she said. “ _He_ thought…” Bucky was not deaf to the note of accusation in her voice. It punched him square between his breastbones, jumped through the line of marrow holding both halves of his ribs together to puncture his lungs. 

He licked his lips, the lining of his mouth feeling hot and prickly, like he’d never known the taste of water. “Did no one…?” Bucky asked weakly.

“Tell us?” Peggy asked sharply. She blinked, as though still trying to process his existence. “No,” she said, a little sharp, abrasive in a way that reminded him of Steve. “No one did.”

That didn’t make a lick of sense, though: Diana had told him that the Commandos had wished to see him. Had that been a spur of the moment line fed to Bucky to comfort him? Had she known him so well that the idea of ever leaving Paradise Island, much less returning to the SSR base without Steve waiting for him there was something that he would never carry out? He loved his folks, loved his sisters something fierce, but coming back to Brooklyn had not been in Bucky’s life itinerary: he received a letter from his Ma about eight months ago, saying how she and Becca had packed up all of the things in his and Steve’s place, how they were waiting for him to come home to retrieve them, that they’d be waiting for as long as it would take.

He had all he needed, clothing-wise. The only really important trio of photographs—one of the girls sitting on the front stoop, grinning wide at the camera, one of his parents, sitting on their old couch in the living room, and one of he and Steve, back when Steve was ninety-pounds soaking wet and primarily composed of sharp angles, Bucky’s face tipped in real close to his, _intimate_ — had been tucked in his jacket when he fell.

Steve was gone and that meant home was a concept he was no longer acquainted with. Bucky wandered, like some sort of fucking ghost just wandering a wasteland.

“I think,” she said, switching tones as easily as one might shrug on a different coat. “This is a conversation we should have in a more private setting.”

Peggy stalked through the doorway which she’d first appeared and shot a look over her shoulder that he took to mean _well quite dragging your feet, Barnes, come on_. He shot her a tiny smile, feeling his beaten heartstrings tug when she returned the minuscule curl of her mouth. Hell, Bucky might have even imagined it, but he’d take the illusion. He’d seize it and hold tight. 

He was led into an area packed with male agents, nearly all of whom flicked curious glances their way. One tall, lithe blond fella stepped into their path, his hands braced on his hips. The line of Peggy’s shoulders went rigid. “Agent Carter, who the hell is this?”

Bucky didn’t like the way this schmuck’s attitude, but he didn’t say a word. He made the right move, opting to remain silent. “This, Agent Thompson, is Sergeant Barnes of one hundred and seventh infantry. He was second-in-command to Captain Rogers. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think you have work to do.”

They ducked into a conference room, Peggy snapping the door closed and pivoting on her heal to stare at him. “Where have you been this last year, hmm?”

It was a perfectly valid question. “Away,” Bucky said. “Recovering.”

“Yes,” Peggy said, flicking her gaze down only briefly to his pinned sleeve, though he had no doubt it was one of the first things she’d noticed upon seeing him. “I can see why that would be necessary. The better question is why did you never come back to headquarters? Drop in and let us know you weren’t rotting at the bottom of a ravine in the Alps?”

(There was more than just an askance for her sake. There was accusation, like because he was unconscious for several days on Paradise Island, was not lucid enough to ask Diana to tell Steve he was alive sooner, that Steve didn’t make it home. Hell, she might even be right, but that was an argument for another day.)

“I sent my friend to London—she’s the one who gave me the news about…,” his throat locked up, a metal gate slamming shut and cutting off all flow of word. Bucky never could say Steve’s name aloud. “According to her, she got there the day after.”

“ _Friend_?”

“You remember that woman that Dum-Dum didn’t shut up about for three weeks after that screwy mission in Munich? The one who turned out to be a Princess from an isolationist nation no one’s ever heard of?” Peggy nodded. “She’s… an advanced. She’s strong and she’s highly intelligent and she’s the most talented fighter I’ve ever seen. Her people have more advanced technology than us and the Russians combined, but they only use it to maintain peace— _genuine_ peace—not war. She was the one that found me, that saved my life and gave me a place to get my strength back.”

Then, because even his lengthy explanation seemed lacking in all the areas that counted, he said: “I tried to reach out to him as soon as I could form coherent words. You’ve got to know that.”

The corners of her mouth went tight and if he looked real hard, he could see the scarlet wax of her lipstick just starting to bleed into the smooth edges of her foundation. The sight of such a small flaw grounded him. “I know,” she murmured, the hot air keeping her so wound up deflating here and there. Peggy raised a hand to press into her temples, a thumb at the left, pointer and middle fingers curled into the right. “You would do anything to keep him from hurting even if it meant giving your own life. I’ve seen that—I believed that was the choice you made that day on the train. I want to be furious with you, Barnes. I want to hate you, but I can’t. God help me, but I _can’t_.”   

 _That’s alright_ , Bucky thought. _I hate myself enough for the both of us._

(He would learn, after forty-minutes of conversing and catching up, just as he was about to leave, that Steve’s final words were “ _It’s alright, Peg. It’s alright. I’m gonna see him real soon_ ” and Bucky just—he just—) 

 

-

_1947._

_*_

Diana told him of a saying among her people that at the start of time, one had four hands, four feet, and two faces: Zeus grew displeased with such things, and tore them apart, making it so one had to go through life searching for their other half.

If one was fortunate to find that lost piece the bond formed between the pair is referred to as a soul mate.

From the moment he punched Bobby O’Donnell in the mouth, cracking open the skin of his knuckles, and helped that skinny blond punk out the dirt, Bucky knew, even if it was just a barely distinguishable inkling in the start, that things had changed. He knew that Steve was something different—more important than any person he’d met; more _vital_ to Bucky’s existence than anyone else in the population of Brooklyn, in the population of the entire world.

The legend was true.

There is a small subsection no one warned him about: the so-called myth works in reverse, too, meaning if that soul mate is lost, the pieces gained are taken with them.

Without Steve, he was half the person he once was, limping through the hours with bloodied feet and broken hands and a tattered pair of lungs and a chasm ripping wider and wider in his chest. Nothing could fill the void.

He didn’t try to.

 

_-_

_Los Angeles, 1949._

_*_

The years had not been kind to him, but Bucky tried to live, if for Steve’s sake rather than his own.

*

He knocked lightly on the wooden door at the back of the church, having carefully shifted his way between a couple of dark haired kids who looked near identical to the groom, though Bucky knew them to be cousins. “Come in!”

Bucky smiled when he saw Peggy rise from the little padded stool settled at the base of a gilded mirror, smoothing out the silk of her white gown. The sleeves were made of lace and came to a halt around the delicate bones of her wrists; the bodice hugged the upper half of her frame, the material of the skirt fanning out, dragging behind her as she moved to properly greet him.

“I know you’ve got plenty already, but I bought these,” Bucky held out the bouquet of lilies for her to cradle in her arms.

“Thank you, James,” Peggy murmured, dipping in to kiss his cheek. She never smudged the pristine line of her red mouth, the fan of her lashes throwing a shadow onto her cheekbones. “They’re lovely.”

“Not as lovely as you,” he said fondly. “Daniel is a lucky man.”

“No,” she said, dipping her nose to inhale the sweet smell of the flowers. “No, I’m the lucky one, I think.”

He took the flowers back from her long enough to pop out into the entry and snag a vaguely vase-shaped holder, filling it with tap water from the bathroom attached to her changing room. “He’d cry if he saw you, yanno,” Bucky said, settling a hand on Peggy’s shoulder and the flowers at her elbow.

Bucky did not have to clarify who _he_ was. Peggy knew. Peggy always knew. Their eyes met, blue against brown, in the mirror provided for Peg to doll herself up before the actual ceremony. “I have no doubt he would if he saw you, as well.”

Gently, he pressed a light peck to the center of her hairline. “Well, at least one of us is getting it together. I’ve got time.” _Too much. Too much god damn time_. “This is your day and when I came in, the sun was shining and the birds were singing and all that other bullshit that’s a signal of a great day laying ahead.”

“Why Mr. Barnes!” Peggy said, clapping a hand to her mouth, eyes growing comically wide. “What a terrible mouth you have! We’re in a house of God.”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “Right. Sorry.” Though his tone was definitely anything but apologetic. “Didn’t you know? I’m Jewish. I’m surprised I’ve not broken out into hives for being in a _Catholic_ church.” Just to make her smile again, Bucky shuddered grandly.  He could stand up on the alter and shout colorful swear until his tongue flapped right out of his mouth and not give a damn.

This was Peggy’s day, though—she deserved the best. She and Daniel both did.

“Excuses,” she huffed, settling her veil atop her head. He noticed it was the same lace as her sleeves, only there were small, opalescent beads sewn into the delicate material.

“I bet you a buck that Stark is gonna try to do something obnoxious that involves fireworks at the reception,” Bucky said.

Peggy leveled him with a _look_ , as though warning the universe at large that it had better keep Stark on a short leash for the hours to come. “I’ve got Mr. Jarvis keeping an eye out for any antics.”

Bucky slanted a smile at her and he felt himself go soft. “And you know I’ve got your back, too, Peg.”

Daniel’s mother poked her head inside. She had mahogany hair just like her son, almond-shaped eyes, wore a neat blouse and skirt that flattered her age-rounded body. “Peggy, dear, it’s time.”

Given that Peggy’s father passed away when she was small and her mother couldn’t come over from England in time for the ceremony, it was Edwin Jarvis that gave her away. Bucky slid in to take his seat a few rows from the front, taking a space on the pews near the side aisles, rather than the central line of red carpeting. He didn’t really want to be caught up in the mess of movement once everything had elapsed.

He’d never been in a church before, not even back when Steve loyally turned up for Mass each Sunday. Hell, he’d been taught _not_ to enter any sort of church or mosque. He and his God hadn’t spoken much, not for a really long time. Bucky watched the flow of bridesmaids on the arms of Daniel’s relatives and friends, saw a few agents from the SSR amongst the attendees. Peg’s best friend Angie took up the position of maid of honor, her hair curled and her eyes bright and damp: Ana Jarvis glowed as she stood beside Angie, dabbing at her nose with a hankie.

There were so many statues, so many paintings of saints and angels and martyrs and the stained glass windows were letting in too much light, the faces of the idols looking pained and weak and Bucky stood on autopilot when the rest of the church-body did. He turned, watched Peggy being led on Jarvis’ elbow, both of them pink-cheeked and grinning. She said something to him, and he fumbled for a something and looked painfully fond when Ana pressed her hankie into his hand. He used it, loudly, gasping on a breath.

That got a laugh out of the church. Bucky didn’t make a sound.

It was a beautiful ceremony.

*

He was loitering by the bar when he heard a whoosh of breath and a familiar voice say: “I knew that was you.”

Bucky whipped around and found himself face-to-face with Dum-Dum, Gabe, and Jim, all of them looking a little pale and a little shocked. “I’ll be damned,” Dum-Dum breathed. “It is him.”

They looked a bit older, but not gray. Each of the men stood straight-backed, hands at their sides—a stance learned and kept from Basic. Gabe had a wedding ring on his finger, Dum-Dum had a new bowler cap, and Jim had let his hair grow out a little longer than he’d kept it on the fronts, just past his ears, but neatly styled for the occasion. They’d all taken on little lines of stress near the corners of their eyes, along their foreheads, gained smile-marks at the sides of their mouths—Bucky was glad for that, at least.

Knowing absolutely nothing better to do, he turned away from the ghosts that had materialized from behind and said: “Bar tender? We’re going to need you to keep up a steady stream of whiskey.”

They shuffled towards the end of the bar, tugging their stools in close so they’d not be over-heard. They didn’t hug: they’d never been huggers. “Peg didn’t tell us you’d be here,” Jim wagered after several minutes of quiet. It wasn’t strained so much as it was mending. It was a bit like being away from home for a long vacation and then once you step inside you’ve got to poke around, reacquaint yourself.

“Yeah,” Bucky agreed, not bothering to search the crowd for Peggy’s white gown, to even move. “She didn’t tell me, either.”

“She said that after the mission in the Alps you went away for a while,” Gabe added, sharing a look with Dum-Dum, then flicking his eyes to Jim. An unspoken something was uttered over Bucky’s head. He tossed back his seventh whiskey. It could have been his first for all it affected him.

“I’ve been… recovering,” was the only word that he could find that fit the description of how he’d spent the last four years, recycling it from his conversation with Peggy a few years back. “Diana found me at the bottom of that ravine, offered me sanctuary until I could get on my feet again.”

“Woah,” Dum-Dum said, mustache twitching. “ _Diana_? The looker that saved Cap from that fire in Munich? _That_ Diana?”

“Down, boy,” Bucky said, slipping into the old rounds of banter like a worn winter coat, the stitches frayed, the seams straining. “She’s a friend. Practically a sibling. We’ve got about as much an interest in each other as you’ve got with canned Spam.”

“Careful, Barnes,” Gabe warned. “You’ll trigger his shell-shock.”

Dum-Dum shoved Bucky’s good shoulder, hitting Gabe with his other broad hand, both actions void of malicious heat. “Fuckin’ _Spam_ ,” Dum-Dum shuddered. “Throw me in a firefight, sure, but sit me down and try to make me eat Spam? Not happening.”

For the first time in ages, Bucky _laughed_.

(They spoke for hours, easy as anything.)

*

It was later, much later once he had to help Jim tote Dum-Dum’s sloppy ass to a waiting car and gave Gabe a firm handshake, taking down the addresses of all the Commandos, including Frenchy and Monty who’d remained on the other side of the pond, that Bucky found himself at the edges of the party, people watching. The crowds had thinned out, that was for sure, but by no means was the reception wrapping up. The summer night was balmy and most men were red-faced with drink.

“I could build you one,” came a voice from his left, slurring at the edges and spilling loudly into the night.

He rounded on his heel and found himself face to face with Howard Stark. Bucky hadn’t seen him in person since the days in the underground bunker in London, when everything was sepia-toned and near everyone wore army-green uniforms like body bags. “A what?”

“An _arm_ ,” Stark said, the _duh_ unspoken, but understood just fine. “If you wanted. I think if you gave me a week or two, I could design a fully-operational prosthetic that worked as well as your actual arm.”

Bucky didn’t want to be a machine. He’d moved through life on gasoline as it was. The last thing he needed was to have some chunk of metal attached to him. “I’ll pass, thanks.”

“You’re loss, pal,” Stark said, paying about as much attention as a dog in the midst of a field of butterflies. “Oh, lone bridesmaid!”

He watched Stark stride off, his stumble almost completely hidden as he walked up to a leggy woman across the room, appearing before her as though they were life-long friends. Bucky cocked an eyebrow. “Good talk,” he muttered under his breath. “What a schmuck.”

The live band was playing “I’ll Be Seeing You”, the trumpets rising and falling, the piano jerking at his heartstrings something fierce. He worried if the notes became any sharper, that he’d be cut open, the broken pieces of himself spilling out for the entire world to see. Daniel’s parents swayed gently together on the dance floor, a slightly elevated stage of hardwood with concrete supports. Couples were invading, moving in warm pairs to share a tender moment.

Steve had loved this song. He’d hum it under his breath when missions ran too long and he couldn’t touch Bucky as often as he wished to. Couldn’t carry a tune very well, his Stevie, but Bucky could decipher the melody alright, knew it like he did the city-smell of Brooklyn or the hitch to Steve’s breath when Bucky would kiss him just right.

Standing there, immobile and locked in a world lifetimes away, he watched the way Daniel and Peg moved to the floor, too, glowing within the spheres of each other’s light. Bucky’s heart ached fiercely.

He thought of crackling radios, of hot nights in a matchbox apartment, of clear blue eyes shining with bottomless pools of adoration and love. Bucky forgot how to breathe. Was he still breathing?  Tears rose up and stabbed at the corners of his eyes, throwing the gold-lit scene into blurred focus, making suit stifling and his hands quiver though he had them folded together.

Bucky turned away.

(Stark ended up setting off fireworks, a show worthy of the lineup along the Hudson on Steve’s birthday. His mustache was singed, but he looked so, so pleased with himself.)

 

-

_Paradise Island, 1954._

* 

"You haven't aged a day," Bucky said quietly. He'd pulled on the same deep blue tunic he'd been gifted with the day he woke up and found himself lacking one limb, even tied the same silver rope around his waist. If there was a bit of extra length hanging down, showing signs of a thinner stature than before, neither of them uttered a word about it. 

"Neither have you," she countered. Bucky had known her a while—beneath her collected exterior, there laid a bone-deep concern that came from being very kind. "I am a child of Zeus and have lived for thousands of years and I have no doubt I shall see a thousand more. What is your excuse?" 

He'd rolled it around in his head, had held the answer on his tongue for many years, just waiting for the right time to release it into the open. “The same reason I survived falling off a train, I suppose. I was juiced up with a knock-off of the serum shoved into my system by some sociopathic doctor. I’ve bumped into things and gotten bruises that fade in the matter of hours. I’m thirty-six and I’ve never had a gray hair. I don’t even have any lines on my face.”

“Other men would normally be pleased to have such preserved features,” Diana pointed out. “You’re not?”

“You know why,” he said. “I know you do.”

She made a soft noise, nearly a grunt, but not. Bucky didn’t think she was capable of making such an inelegant sound. “You show me the strength of the human spirit,” Diana said. “That no matter how much time passes, you are capable of love. It’s an honorable way to live, but I’m worried for you.”

Bucky shook his head, pushing his limp hair from his forehead. “You don’t need to be. There’s plenty else in this world for you to worry over.”

“As I said,” and her voice gained a bit of pressure, like a hand settled on and squeezing his bicep. “You’re my friend and I care for you. I’ll worry for your well-being even if you are perfectly fine.

“James, I used to want to save this world, but the longer that I’ve lived, the more I’ve seen, the less I want to go out and try to clean up the messes of men and the more I wish to remain here and look away from the errors of leaders. What is the point of leaving my place of safety when I can just turn my back?

“On the days I doubt my morals, I think of you,” she claimed, reaching out to cradling his hand in both of hers. Diana had long, slim fingers, strong and smooth. “Though you suffer so much for what you’ve lost, you still wake with the dawn and you fight to get through the day. Man changes his mind so frequently, but you? Never have you wavered from your adoration of your love and I don’t think you ever shall. The amount of respect I hold for you, James, cannot be expressed in words.”

They stood mere feet from the edge of a cliff. The pair of horses they’d rode down on were patiently waiting, taking the occasional nibble of grass. Rounds of weathered stone as tall as small mountains guarded the perimeter of the island a quarter of and a half a mile from shore, standing tall in pools of clear, cerulean blue,  each covered with untainted green plant-life. The surf hitting the ragged line of rocks below was soothing, a lullaby he’d come to know well from all the nights he’d paced the beaches here.

He wondered if he’d survive the jump.

Bucky felt shame rush through him at the thought, given the kind words Diana had just gifted him with. “They aren’t all terrible,” he murmured softly. “It takes a bit of searching, but sometimes the few good people you can find make up for the many bad.”

“I see that now,” Diana said, tipping her face up and away so Boreas or whatever deity of hers controlled the wind could send her hair fluttering around her cheeks, her neck.

“Good,” Bucky said lamely. His supply of words was depleted for the day. She’d see that, too.

 

-

 

_1955._

*

Bucky inhales.

He exhales.

Inhales.

Exhales.

Some days, he wished that would stutter, just for a change. He wouldn’t object to a complete cancellation, either. 

 

 

_Los Angeles._

_*_

“Come on, Barnes,” Peggy said. Marrying a good man had dulled her hard edges: becoming a mother had smoothed the charcoal lines that made her up into something soft, but not easily destructible. She looked at him with such gentle brown eyes that his heart panged for his Ma. “You can’t just move through life hopping back and forth between Themyscira and the States. That’s no way to live.”

 _I’m not living_ , Bucky formed the words in his mouth. Didn’t let them fall. They both knew this fact.

“I’m fine, Peg,” he told her instead, fastening his press smile on, edging up one side of his mouth a little higher than the other.

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t talk to me like I’m a fool. I know you, James. I know that you barely eat and you hardly sleep and that you just spend you’re days running, literally running and moving away from the people who care about you.” Then, like Peggy was toeing her way out onto an unsteady limb, she threw out: “Steve wouldn’t want this for you.”

“You think I’m not aware of that?” Bucky snapped, blood rushing up from where it had piled heavily in his stomach and sloshed around at his insides to stifle at his collar, to fill his head and send his temples pulsing.

She sat back. The café they’d chosen to meet at was nearly empty, in-between the breakfast and lunch rush. The only reason he’d gotten to see her in the middle of the week is due to her having been shot on a mission four days ago, and Daniel, as head of the SHIELD division in Los Angeles, benched her. “You certainly don’t act like in such a manner.”

His jaw went tight at the hinge. Though it was the middle of the summer and the sun was slanting right down on his brow and he could feel his shoulder blades accumulating a thin layer of perspiration, Bucky was cold all the way down to his toes.

“If you had twenty years, twenty far too short years with Daniel where you basically lived in each other’s pockets, where you faced death and sickness and heartache together, but you also saw so much joy and happiness and gave so much love you felt ill with it, and then it was all jerked away from you… Peg, I know you’re not the average lady. I’ve seen you in the midst of some rough times, but can you honestly look me in the face and say that you would just _move on_ from Daniel? Could you pick up the pieces and just act like none of it hurts you?”

She dropped her gaze from his face. Had this been a chess game, he would have called checkmate.

“You could come and work for SHIELD, you know,” Peggy suggested after a length of silence stretched between them. “Invest your time constructively, help where needed.”

Bucky snorted, poking at his limp French fries without any real interest. “Yeah, because I totally need to put myself in a situation where there’ll be bullets. Thanks for the offer, but I’ll have to pass.” He didn’t have to have a skywriter tell Peggy that he didn’t trust himself not to stand still for too long, to pointedly place himself in a situation where he’d invite a knife to his jugular, a bullet to the head, a grenade to the belly.

She didn’t press anymore after that.

Peggy didn’t eat, either.

*

He didn’t forget this conversation, though. It was one of those things that could not be swept aside even if Bucky physically got a broom and tried to do so, used a jug of bleach to white out everything, the whole nine yards.

The idea came to him in the middle of the night, just after the witching hour had passed: _travel_. He didn’t want to be a tool to the military, didn’t want to be dipped into the mess brewing in Russia because he hated a New York winter and really didn’t want to lose another limb from frost bite by being with the polar bears in the _real_ north in the Soviet bloc. He’d considered it, though. Going back in, going back to fight. He had no arm, though, which was one of his biggest weaknesses—though every damn time Bucky’s luck ran out and he saw Howard, the man always offered to build him a prosthetic, but Bucky said no, always said no. He knew if he ever went back onto the field, it would be far too easy to just _lose himself._

And so—

Being a nomad of sorts was the easier. Bucky, though he visited the US all the time, did not have a place of his own.  He had clothes, a few photos, a couple of trinkets, money for food wired into his bank account from SHIELD and the military for compensation and disability coverage. As it was just him and he did not have a house, the money piled up. He tended to stick to Paradise Island, helping with anything that needs help as to not feel like he was leaching off Diana and her people.

Besides, he’d long since accepted that any sort of home he might have hoped to forge had died with Steve.

“Thanks for taking her off my hands,” the man said, offering a hand up for Bucky to shake. It was only when Bucky was in the midst of bring up his own hand that the man had to switch arms, flushing fiercely and smiling sheepishly when Bucky just dipped his head. “Sorry.”

“S’fine,” Bucky assured him. The fella had to be in his mid-fifties, a bit of a belly, a lot of scruff adorning his cheeks and jowls. “If you’re not used to it, well.”

“I shouldn’t even bother with the truck—I should be thanking you for your service to this country.” The keys to his new ride were dropped in his palm, jingling and clanking. Catching the sun. “It belonged to my boy. I couldn’t bear parting with it, but…,” the man’s brow furrowed, his throat seizing up. “It’s been a long time.”

Bucky risked reaching out to clasp the man by the ball of his shoulder, giving him a squeeze. “I…I lost my best friend to the war. There are times when I’ll hear a joke and I’ll turn to my left to tell him the punch line and then,” Bucky’s lungs were tightening, cement filling him up and making him heavy, leaving a cold, cold feeling just under the surface of his skin. He pulled in a trembling breath. “And then I look and he’s not there. It could be ten years or fifty or even a whole lifetime, and you never stop missing them.”

The man gave a strong sniffle, bumping his bare wrist under his eyes to swipe at the half-formed tears. “God, ain’t that the truth.”

Bucky licked his lips. Talking about Steve to anyone, even people like Diana and Peggy and Daniel, sent him reeling, sent him into the years he could not return to. His words were short, but not unkind. “Thank you again, sir.”

Shaking his head, the man said: “Be careful, bud. Be safe out there.”  

He nodded, once, because he could not make a promise he wasn’t sure he was capable of keeping.

The vehicle Bucky bought was a solid, sleek black Ford truck, the type with wooden railings along the bed in the back for deliveries. It was in pristine condition with no sign of rust in sight. The man must have taken very good care of it as even the hubcaps on the tires shined.  

He climbed in the cab, throwing his duffel towards the passenger side. Bucky shut the door, put the key in the ignition. The man was still waiting near the curb. They made eye contact, just for a moment, and the man tapped his heals together, straight-backed and sober-faced: he threw off a salute, one that Bucky returned with an exhausted half-smile, two fingers flicked off his brow.

Starting the engine, Bucky put the vehicle into first gear, easing his way down the quiet street.

He’d heard Niagara Falls was quite a sight to see.

-

 

_1959._

*

Peggy and Daniel welcomed their second child into the world on a Wednesday in October. It’s a little girl. She weighed in at a strong seven pounds, nine ounces.

They named her Stephanie.

Bucky wept in silence from a truck stop in Colorado.

 

-

_Kansas, 1963_

*

He saw the President shot live from a television in a bar in Lawrence. It was just him and the owner, a couple of other patrons sitting in gob-smacked silence as the nation fell apart in the span of two gunshots.

They tried to say a mutant was responsible, the same guy who’d stopped the Missile Crisis in Cuba a little over a year ago.

Bucky slapped down a ten dollar bill to cover his tab. He left just as quietly. The pink of Jackie Kennedy’s suit catching the sun as she tried to hold her husband’s head in one piece was burned into his corneas.

 

_Paradise Island_

_*_

In all honesty, Bucky wasn’t exactly sure what led to him and Diana sucking up a majority of the contents from a barrel of Themysciran wine, but there they were, flat on their backs on the southern-most beach with a pair of golden goblets discarded at their sides. He’d not been drunk since nineteen forty and to have his body be warm, fuzzy with alcohol’s potent fingers winding through him was _awesome_.

He hiccuped.

Diana _giggled._

His clumsy fingers undid the straps of his sandals so he could just wedge his feet in the sand, wriggle his toes a bit. He had to poke himself to be sure he was still solid. The world was spinning and he was falling, even though he was already flat on his back.

Neither had them had stopped laughing, practically wheezing by the time they straightened themselves out and found comfort positions draped in the warm evening air.

“Hey,” Diana said, bumping his foot with hers. She was still smiling, but she was no longer laughing.

He broke off a final chuckle, swallowing to push back the bubble of air that rendered him incapable of speaking. “Hey,” Bucky said in return.  

“I have loved one man before,” Diana told him, softly like a secret. “He was a soldier with the kindest blue eyes. Like the water, here. He was golden and stubborn and witty. Tall. Handsome.” She licked her lips, tipping her head so her cheek was partially pressed into the sand, her eyes glassy as they met his. “His name was Steve Trevor.”

_Was._

Past-tense had haunted Bucky. It still did. He’d never get rid of past-tense, not when history books were composed in it. “Sounds like a real catch,” Bucky whispered.

Diana smiled, wide and dopey. He’d never seen her so relaxed, without an ounce of guard up around her expression, completely void of any of the Amazonian warrior power coiled up in her stance. It was like a breath of fresh air and a punch to the gut all at once. “I met him in the war before yours. And then, in our final fight together, he crashed in his plane.” The smile had slipped away. Bucky wished, wished harder than he’d wished for anything in a decade, that it would come back. “There was nothing I could do.”

He saw, now, how she knew how to deal with Bucky and the bottomless cavern of guilt that festered in him because she was dealing with precisely the same thing. Bucky tipped in and pressed a gentle kiss to her brow. “You couldn’t have helped that,” he told her. “You may be a goddess, but you can’t control fate.”

She huffed, eyes a little clearer, though she was still boneless in the sand. “What is it you Americans say? Pot meet kettle?”

Bucky huffed, too. “Point taken.”

“I made a point of not thinking of him,” Diana said. “I only allowed myself to look ahead and never back. Sometimes that’s more dangerous than only looking behind you at what’s passed because you push everything away, including the people, the consequences, and the memories. It’s a dull ache, now.”

She was so strong. What he wouldn’t give for just an ounce of such resilience.  He never stopped holding Steve’s face in his head, not a day passed, not an hour or a minute, where he didn’t think _I wonder what Steve would think_ or _If Steve were here, he’d go absolutely fucking nuts_ or some variation.

“I don’t know what I am without him,” Bucky confessed. The stars above his head were hazy, so far away. He lifted his right hand to beckon them closer, to lighten the dark ink of the sky. The stars refused to be moved. His arm flopped limply over his stomach. “Soon, I’ll have spent just as much as my life with him as I have without him.” He tried and failed to wrap his head around that. Couldn’t do it, not even when Bucky tried to strain himself as though if he concentrated hard enough, he would be able to take back the previous seconds and stuff the realization back deep within himself, into the dark, acidic pits he could never venture to.

Her hand found his.

He held on, like she was an anchor and the only thing that keeping him from drifting out to sea.

 

-

 

_Chicago, 1968._

*

He’d never been to Illinois before. From what he’d read about the Windy City in the papers, it wasn’t the place one really wanted to live in.

Right now, especially.

There had to be thousands of people swarming the streets, all of them shouting and bearing anti-war signs. People with picket signs— **BRING THE TROOPS HOME! CEASE FIRE NOW!** —men in uniform. He’d seen a couple guys chuck their medals in the faces of police, heard one scream: “What the fuck are these good for, huh? What do they do for me? Jack shit that’s what!”

See, in situations like these, one has to tread lightly because the moment the authorities get involved, things can unravel and get real messy in the matter of seconds. He’d come through just to see the Hull House, something Peggy suggested he go look at a few weeks previous when he’d spoken to her—he’d read up on Abigail Addams, how she helped immigrants adjust to the new American life, helped their kids adapt to a foreign environment, how she helped to provide this new working class with opportunities to prosper.

He thought about Sarah Rogers, how she’d been six months pregnant with Steve when she arrived in Brooklyn, alone and made a life for herself, working to kick the Irish lilt to her voice. He missed his own folks, his sisters. His Pa died two winters after Steve, with his Ma passing in fifty-seven and Grace having been killed in an automotive accident a year following. Alice was a nurse on the Vietnam fronts and he can see her, now, carefully mending her broken toys as a little girl, being gentle with everything because to her, everything held value, everything was capable of pain. Rebecca, though, had never left New York. She reported for the Daily Bugle, had married a guy named Proctor, popped out a pair of kids.

Bucky was always closer to Becca than anything. They had the same chin, same eyes, but her hair was darker than his, curly, like Steve in that she had a sharp wit and a biting slap if she disagreed with the words leaving her opposition. She got in trouble a lot at school for that and he tried to lead her away from being so vocal, but she never wavered from her beliefs. He’d been proud of her, for that. Still was. 

He’d considered dropping in, but never let himself travel so far on that train of thinking.

Something was happening amongst the protesters, now, something that spurred them on and made their voices rise above the din. Bucky curled his shoulders down a little, trying to track his way back to his truck. He’d parked it a couple blocks away, having not expected this sort of scene. A line of police officers were storming the crowd, bearing shields and pushing everyone back, shoving, shouting, making a cacophony of noise that physically stung the inside of his eardrums.

Shoving started. He’d expected that much, trying to move against the waves of people. Most were pushing back at the police, trying to break their line instead of backing away. A woman in blue was elbowed in the face, a man in green cut his lip from a hard hit to the jaw.

Bucky darted forward when a girl who could be no older than twenty-five went flying backward from getting the brunt of a blow from a long plastic shield, catching her one armed and righting her.

“Thanks, mist—Holy shit!” the girl yelled, square-framed glasses on her nose, a camera in her hands. Her eyes were on the verge of falling out of her skull. “ _Bucky Barnes_?”

He blinked at her, taking an involuntary step back, only for the masses of people to close around him sharply. It may as well have not even moved at all for all the distance he gained. “I haven’t been called that in a while,” was his reflexive response.

Before he could so much as raise a hand to cover his face, or even think to do so, the girl raised her camera and snapped a quick succession of photos, all getting a clear shot of him. Bucky ducked his head quickly, doing a smooth about face. He searched for any weak crevice amongst the hurricane of people, shooting through the cracks.

 _She knows who I am_ , he thought, paling. This was how he’d functioned for so long—Bucky Barnes was a footnote in the history books, the dumb sidekick who’d tailed after Captain America in the European theater and helped dismantle Hydra. He had died in the Alps. He was only alive to those who knew him. It was so easy that way.

And— and now—

"Sergeant Barnes! Wait, please, Sergeant Barnes! What are your thoughts on the MLK assassination?" The girl was fighting to get through the people, too, the actual protest having been forgotten. She likely reasoned with herself that other sources would pick up the event: only she would have this scoop. Only she would hold the power to pull back the curtain on his silent gliding though the world and shine a spotlight on it.

Bucky carefully worked his way through the mass of people, moving and trying not to jostle them too hard as to avoid making the situation even worse. She already had his photo. He was already _seen_. "I think it is a tragedy. I watched his speech at the Lincoln Memorial a few years ago: he was a brilliant man, a good man. He didn’t need to die."

He thought about those words the moment they left his mouth. No one _needed_ to die, but it seemed that the good always died first.

(Bucky didn’t allow himself to focus on that conclusion, and what that must mean for him.)

Once he'd spoken up about one thing, the girl saw that it must be alright to toss another series of asks his way: 

"Do you believe the Kennedy curse is real?" 

That sharp flash of pink flared before his mind’s eye. Bucky felt the hairs on his arm stand straight. "No." 

“Do you think Johnson needs to increase the number of troops—?”

Finally, he snapped whipping around and stopping in his step, nearly throwing the girl off balance. She had a tape recorder in one hand, poised to catch his every breath: "Fuck that war. It's not necessary. It started out as a noble thing and now it's just a pissing contest between countries. The death tolls are only going to get higher unless someone swallows their pride and just stops everything. Now, if you please, ma’am, I’m just trying to find my vehicle.”

He wasn’t sure if he imagined her calling “thank you for your time!” in his wake. Bucky rounded the corner at a run, legs pumping to remove himself from the area as soon as possible. His truck was waiting for him, and with it, escape.

*

There was, of course, an article about him in the New York Times two days following. **_BUCKY BARNES BACK FROM THE DEAD AND IN CHICAGO? HOW THE LOST COMMANDO WAS SEEN AT THE WAR PROTESTS OUTSIDE THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION, MORE ON PAGE A7!_**

The next bar he dropped into was showing a nightly newscast with his face, blurry and in monochrome, lighting up the screen.

Bucky grabbed one shot, tossed down a couple of ones, then plowed the hell out of dodge.

*

He flopped down on the musty motel bed, groaning when a small cloud of dust fluttered up around his nose, triggering a sneeze out of him. Bucky picked up the phone by its base, settling it in the crook of his arm as he brought the mouthpiece to rest between his ear and shoulder, dialing the familiar number.

“So much for a low profile, James,” Peggy said, a note of amusement in her voice though he had no trouble picturing the tight line of her mouth, the firm set to her shoulders.

Bucky groaned again, louder this time, more drawn out. “I was passing through, Peg. Some asshat shoved a girl and I reacted. I can’t help that that girl was a reporter!”

“And had a knowledge about wartime figures,” she added.

“And that,” he amended.

Peggy went off the line for a moment, her voice a little more distant, sweeter. One of the kids probably needed something. He checked the clock and found that it was two hours earlier in LA, how Daniel must have just made dinner and Peggy must have just walked in from another day at quietly preventing the world from falling apart. “Sorry,” she said, still gentle as she stepped out of mother-mode. “Michael needed help with an algebra problem.”

“With the parents he’s got? He’ll be an Einstein—no one likes algebra anyway,” Bucky said, closing his eyes. His mouth was running away from him, going loose with nerves. His life was quiet—there were only a handful of folk who knew that he was alive and now, now a god damn _New York Times_ had put a spread about his apparent not-deadness. This was a national paper, the sort that nearly everyone saw, heard from, or that other branches of news took content out of.

Becca worked for the Daily Bugle. She’d see it. She’d see he was alive and hadn’t bothered to come back to them and say so. He curled a hand over his mouth to keep from getting sick.

“I think it may be wise if you stick to more rural areas. Stay out of the cities—this is an election year, James, this news will blow out of interest in under a month.”

He hoped she was right. A small, hysterical laugh welled up and out of him. It was Peggy fucking Carter: of course she was right. She damn near always was.  

*

Not a lot of people visited National Parks in the fall months. Most that would have an interest tended to hit the trails when their children were out of school as to make it a family venture. Bucky started up in California at the Redwood , winding down to Yosemite and Death Valley, taking a sharp turn north to head towards Yellowstone, Mount Rushmore, and the Badlands, moving southeast until he arrived at the Hot Springs in Arkansas and Shenandoah in Virginia. From there, he hopped from beach to beach up the coast, getting a bit of color back to his skin, until he was up in Maine at Acadia.

He rarely spoke to anyone and even then these tended to be people who he was giving his food order to.

If someone recognized him, they didn’t give away a cue that suggested so.  

 

-

 

_Los Angeles, 1969._

_*_

"You're joking." 

"I can assure you, I'm not," came Peggy's sharp voice down the line. 

Bucky pinched at the bridge of his nose, inhaling nice and slow. “You’re telling me that Stark, Howard goddamn Stark of Stark Industries, is going to be a _father_?”

“Oh good,” Peggy said dryly. “You’ve remained spry in your old age.”

“Ha ha,” he snipped in return without a bit of humor. They both knew he hadn’t aged a day since before the war had ended: there was not a wrinkle or a gray hair in sight, no matter how hard he squinted or strained or yearned for them. Once, when they’d been out to lunch, someone had complimented Peggy on having such a “dashing son”. His voice turned dark, serious. “Peg, you and I both know that Howard Stark is in no way equipped to be a father. He’s going to dump the poor kid on a nanny or have Jarvis raise him or her. Maria is so busy managing all of Stark’s foundations that I’m surprised she even has the time to _get_ pregnant.” That brought Bucky up short. “It _is_ Maria that’s pregnant, right?”

Peggy didn’t even snort like he believed she might. “Yes,” she confirmed. “It is.”

She only got short with him, or anyone, when she was battling with something in that clever head of hers. Bucky shifted the phone so he was holding it instead of balancing it in the crook of his shoulder. “Come on, Peg. Spit it out—you’ll only drive yourself crazy if you keep chewing on whatever it is that’s bothering you.”

And, like he had breached a wound, her words came spilling out in a bitter stream: “I know Howard and I know Maria. They are both very one-track people: Maria, I am not as concerned with, but Howard? James, he’ll only see that babe as a project, something to program and pick apart—not a precious creation to be nurtured and cared for.”

Bucky gave her a moment to gather herself, to put a lock on her worries. There was a rustle against the speaker, as though she was smoothing out her hair and straightening up, shaking off her momentary lapse of cool. When he spoke, his voice was kind. “You and I both know you’d never allow that to happen. That baby is going to be so loved by you and Daniel, by Michael and Stephanie, by the Jarvis’s, too. Even if Howard and Maria are the world’s worst parents, he or she will have a stable, loving support system—hell, if there is any, I’ll come around and pick up the slack, when need be.”

“You’re serious?” Peggy prompted and _there she is, back in business._

“I’m not doing anything else with my time,” Bucky said. “And every kid needs a damaged, one-armed uncle to get an early dose of the real world, yeah?”

Peggy let out a sharp, surprised puff of air. “James Barnes, you’re terrible.”

“I know,” he smiled.

 

-

 

 

1970

*

Anthony Edward Stark was born on May the twenty-ninth in a sleek Manhattan hospital.

His father was across the country in Los Angeles. Jarvis was the first person to hold him, according to Peggy. Bucky thought that said a lot about the boy’s future and was rather glad for it—the Jarvis’s were good people. They’d make sure the Stark heir turned out alright, as would Peg and Daniel, their kids, too.

Bucky saved the copy of the paper announcing the baby’s birth. He slid it into a brown envelope, tucking it away in his suitcase.

*

In the Arctic Circle, a young girl walked along the ice, trying to find a decent place to hammer out a hole and drop a line in the hopes she’d catch a few fish to bring home to her parents.

She scuffed around, searching carefully for a good spot.

Something dark shifted beneath the surface, not a grand display of movement—just a twitch, a wave, a shudder. She moved on, clomping over the snow, thankful that the summer months had eaten up a bit of the slush that covered the terrain in a constant sheet of white.

Steve Rogers kept sleeping. He never noticed her arrive and pass. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The events shown in Chicago 1968 were protests outside the Democratic National Convention. I've upped the chapter count to 5 because woo boy I got way more invested than I originally planned to be and I just??? I thought this point would be a nice cut-off line. I'm working hard to finish the second half, so fear not!


	4. Odysseus, part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this.”
> 
> Bucky wasn’t sure if he could handle worse.
> 
>  
> 
> (Check the updated tags)
> 
>  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about how I keep upping the chapter count. I swear, it's just because I feel like a majority of people wouldn't want to read huge 10-15k+ chapters and would rather have smaller installments where I can put more attention and care in them. Granted, this chunk of scenes is 14k sooooo... One more chapter after this of Bucky sans Steve before the GRAND REUNION!!!!!!!
> 
> PLEASE NOTE: the event itself isn't an /actual/ suicide attempt, but it is very, er, similar to one? If this is triggering, please be cautious once you get to the year 1988 in this chapter.

_1971._

He saw her in a little deli in Philadelphia, hair dark and starting to gray, eyes roving over the price tags like the Great Depression was about to come back for a second round. When Bucky had been passing through, he’d not expected to spot anyone he knew, hell, he’d just taken a quick tour through Independence Hall and to the site of the Liberty Bell and wanted to grab a brief something to tide him over until he went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art that afternoon.

Bucky watched her through a rack of potato chips move amongst the produce, mouth scrunching up in distaste at what it was she didn’t find. He knew that look. He’d seen it too many times to count across the dinner table when it was another round of cabbage soup instead of the roast beef her best friend Marlene Winters had nearly every other night.

He hadn’t realized that she’d moved out of his line of sight until there was the sound of a plastic hand basket dropping and a carton of eggs began to ooze marigold yolk all over the linoleum.

Rebecca stared at him, taking a reflexive step forward when he dared to meet her eyes. Her mouth dropped open a fraction of an inch and when he tried to edge closer, she moved back, giving a tiny, near-imperceptible shake of her head. That drew a flinch out of him, that he could stand there and not have even uttered a word, and he’d hurt her.

(He wasn’t stupid: the ability to be incapable of feeling things on a small scale was a trait he and Becca had inherited from their Ma.)

“I thought you were still in New York,” Bucky said lamely, no louder than a whisper.

She snapped back, shedding years and becoming the hot-tempered girl he used to know, never pausing, with: “Oh, so you cared enough to check on my address, but you couldn’t, I don’t know,  _drop by_ once in twenty-six years?”

Alright. Bucky deserved that. If it would strip away the mask covering up her hurt—and he barely had to squint to see those big blue eyes of hers glinting with unshed tears, her jaw trembling, her hands balled into white-knuckled fists—he’d give her his truck keys and let her run him over a couple dozen times until he and the pavement were one.

He opened his mouth to explain himself, because he owned her that and so much more, but she raised her hand, her jaw tightening as she only just placed a lid on her anger. “Not here. If I want answers, I want them to be given to me at some place a little classier than a deli with a broken air conditioner.”

Bucky felt like a kicked dog trailing wearily after its owner, falling in on Becca’s six as she went to the front counter and threw down a few dollars to cover the cost of the eggs and a little extra for the guilt of having broken them in the first place. They filed out into the street, Becca striding brisk and long to the point he had to nearly jog to keep pace with her, but he did so without complaint.

After ten minutes of silence, where she led him to a café and they took a table away from the chattering lunch-time masses and Becca asked, serious as a heart attack, for a shot of whiskey. Their young waiter’s face rippled in confusion. “We don’t sell alcohol, ma’am,” he said slowly. “Just Coke products.And coffee.”

“Coffee, then,” Becca said. “Black as you can manage.”

Bucky just settled for a glass of water. He wasn’t sure if he could stomach anything else.  

Another thing he deserved: her steely silence. She kept watching him, her gaze never wavering even as her foot tap-tap-tapped away under the table and gripped at her fork nearly hard enough to bend it in two. She didn’t even have anything that would require using her fork. He stamped down on the urge to swallow thickly. Someone dropped a glass on the concrete and she didn’t so much as jerk.

“You look good,” Bucky told her at last. “Like Ma. You look a helluva lot like Ma.”

“Why didn’t you come back?” she demanded lowly and he could miss the way her words crackled with emotion. Rebecca was trying so damn hard to be cold with him, but her lower lip trembled and suddenly she was that eleven year old girl he’d left behind in Brooklyn in ’42, clinging to his mother’s waist with Alice holding her hand and Grace, tiny, tiny Grace, in his father’s arms. She was so strong—he wanted to tell her so, but knew she’d only kick him if he said anything nice like that. “I had to find out you weren’t dead from fucking PBS, Bucky.  _Goddamn fucking PBS_. And even after the story broke, you didn’t come back.”

He laughed, a damp thing that was breaking apart at the edges. He forced himself to maintain eye contact. “I made the drive a thousand times,” Bucky told her and that was no lie. Through the years, when he’d gotten low and the loneliness was nearly enough to do him in, his mind always circled back around to Rebecca. “I heard you’d gotten married and had a couple babies of your own, that you’d got a job that you enjoyed. I didn’t want to step on all that. Not after you’d gone and grieved.” He had known her address for years—the closest he’d gotten was one street over and he ended up chickening out. Bucky had regretted his weakness, each time he turned in the opposite direction and high-tailed it back off into the shadows to feel sorry for himself in solitude.

She stared, had never stopped staring, even though her eyelashes were clumping with tears. “Damn you,” Rebecca whispered, rubbing away a teardrop before it could smudge the fine powder ghosted over her cheeks. Whatever was going to add to that was held back until the stammering waiter deposited—and nearly fumbled—their beverages and they’d ordered. Becca hadn’t spared the menu a glance and opened it long enough to let her eyes land on something halfway decent; Becca said she’d have some Panini thing.

Bucky said he’d have the same.

When the waiter traipsed away to place their orders, she leaned back, mouth a thin, hard line. Her thumb worried at the gold of her wedding band like a bad habit, rolling it around and around. “How do you still look like you did before you shipped out?” Becca wondered. “You’ve not even got any lines in your face. No silver in your hair.”

That was easy. This was something he knew. “My men and I got captured. To keep one of them from getting killed, I took the heat—some German doctor filled me up with a knock-off of the serum like…,” he drew a breath. “A knock-off of the serum like Steve’s.”

Becca closed her eyes hard, her shoulders jerking like she’d been shoved. “Wow,” she said quietly. “I should have known.”

He didn’t like that praising. He pressed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She snorted and though Bucky could tell it was meant to be a mean sound, there was not a note of maliciousness in her, right then. “The two of you never could function well without the other. Even as young as I was, I could see you both had a codependency streak as long as the Mississippi River. I mean,” and her right shoulder bounced up near her ear in a shrug, “Steve came by our place the day you shipped out and said he’d found an  _opportunity_ to join the army, too, and Ma and Pop didn’t really know what to make of that. And then about two months later, he drops in looking like, well.” Her smile was brittle, a piece of paper he could rip in half.

“Looking like Captain America,” he finished, hollowly. Tip in your ear to Bucky’s mouth—you’d hear the ocean echoing along his bones.

Becca’s fingers folded around her coffee mug, curling in so she could speak at him softly. “You were together.”

He snorted. His bones ached like he was made of an infrastructure of metal and a divine wrench was tightening all his sensitive bolts. “What do you think we did all day in our apartment, huh? Played cards and talked about how much money we didn’t have?”

"I'm—," she began, melting at the corners, going soft. He was reminded, suddenly, of Peggy: after she'd had Michael and Steph, Peg had become gentler, less cold in a few ways that only those who really knew her would have been able to tell—Peggy had always been kind, but once she’d had a taste of motherhood, it began to leak into her everyday actions. Once, he’d had something at the corner of his mouth and she licked a napkin and reached across the table to rub it off. They’d laughed for twenty minutes, after.

“It’s been a long time,” Bucky said hoarsely, reaching for his water for something to do with his hand, to keep his eyes from meeting hers. He trembled as he drank, the ice clanking and tinkling around in the glass as he forced the cool mouthfuls of liquid down his throat. “It’s alright, Becs.” He couldn’t tell her it didn’t hurt anymore because that would be a falsity. “I’ve learned to cope with it.”

“By becoming an isolationist?”Becca croaked.

He shook his head. “More like a nomad. I can’t sit still. If I do, I start to think and that never did anyone any good.” Bucky’s attempt at humor only made Rebecca grow sadder.

“I still wish you’d have come by, at least to just  _tell_ me.” She had gotten the pieces of herself that had slipped under control, stirring her spoon around the rim of her mug, letting it clank against the side and sending rhythmic  _ping-ping-ping_ noises into the air. “My oldest, Beth, is a history major—she’d love to meet you. And Rikki, the youngest, is… well,” and Rebecca smiled. “She’s only ten. Four months ago she wanted to be an astronaut, last week she wanted to be a veterinarian. I imagine by New Years, she’ll want to be a ballerina.”

“Becks,” Bucky said, reaching across the table and covering her hand with his as to silence her momentarily. As much as he wanted her to fill in the gaps, to sketch him a detailed image of the family she’d made for herself, rambling ran strong in their family. “ _Breathe_ , alright?”

“My son is seventeen—I named him James after my big brother,” she whispered.

He and his heart hadn’t spoken for a while. It was nice to know something still rattled around in his chest that enabled him to ache fiercely. “Did you now,” he wondered, words cracking in two with a flood of emotion. Call him Noah—watch him get washed away. “And your husband? Does he treat you good? I may only have one arm, but I can still kick a schmuck in the pants if I have to.”

“John is a good man,” Rebecca told him, a touch defensive. “He’s intelligent, has a well-paying job, is warm and he loves me.”

Despite himself and how happy he was, Bucky couldn’t help the way that his lips twitched. “Really?” he said, huffing out a tiny laugh. “You married a man named  _John Proctor_? Becca,  _really_?”

“I happen to love  _The Crucible_ ,” she sniffed, holding the uppity, raised-nose expression for all of a second before she cracked and started to laugh, too. “We met before that play ever came out, if you’ve gotta know.” A pause, a realization sinking into the cracks. “I never told you my last name.”

“I already said I checked in on you over the years,” he admitted, sinking with relief when he spotted their waiter cutting a path across the floor to deposit their dishes in front of them. “And I read your column in the  _Bugle_ —your name is there in black and white.”

“Touché.”

 They kept up conversation easily, as though bumping sentences back and forth over a net and growing all the more confident each time their serve was returned. It was only when the check had been paid and he was holding open the door for her as they left their eatery of choice did Rebecca turn to him and say: “You know, it’s always me who cooks the Thanksgiving turkey every year. My kids are always inviting their friends over—it wouldn’t be any trouble to pull up another chair, I could write or call you? Or you could do the same with me to let me know once the time comes?”

“I don’t really have a place,” Bucky said. “Or a phone number.”

Becca cocked an unimpressed eyebrow at him. She’d been doing that more and more often since they got the heavier baggage carefully unpacked and carefully examined before them. “Well, I’ve got both of those. So.” And then she tugged a pen from her pocketbook and scrawled out an address and a string of digits out on a napkin he’d not seen her swipe. “If you’re up to it, your family will want to meet you. Officially.” Though he was not the one delivering them, the words  _your family_ caught sharply in his throat.

Once they got outside and he sensed that this meeting was rapidly drawing to a close, Bucky touched her arm. “You’ve got to know how proud of you I am, how happy I am that you’ve become such a strong woman. It’s… it’s been so good to see you, Becca.”

She licked her lips and he noticed they’d gotten a little thinner with the years.  _God, she looks just like Ma. If we didn’t have the same chin…_ “Yeah,” Rebecca said quietly. “I guess it was pretty good to see your ugly mug, too, Buck.”

 

-

 

_Washington DC, 1975_

*

The sky was a canvas, brushed on thickly with pink and violet, layered with streaks of orange and gold with deep cobalt in the foreground. Simple pleasures—he’s thankful for them, when he can find them. Sunrises and good ice cream and a positive story in the news where there is so much negativity and sometimes? Sometimes Bucky just wanted to  _yell_ because those small pleasures were delivered few and far in-between. 

Bucky only came to the DC area because he’d never actually seen the nation’s capital or any of the other memorials that had sprung up. It was a humid summer day and it was early—the only people out and about were joggers and the occasional dog walker, business men and white-teethed politicians. He held himself with pointedly slumped shoulders, tucking his hair behind his ears. He had never quite noticed that it had grown out, only that one day he was showering and there was suddenly more of it.

He did, in fact, know he’d grown a bit of scruff, just enough to knock away the clean-cut image that the American public was so familiar with. Bucky may only be operating at about twenty percent power these days, but he wasn’t  _that_ out of tune.

Bucky pulled his plain gray cap a little lower over his forehead. He began his solo tour at the Lincoln Memorial, looking into the face of the sixteenth president. Good Abe had been positioned so his arms were draped on a pair of sickle bushels, hands dangling casually off the end, feet poised as though he were going to rise when his actual larger than life being was dunked in all-preserving white stone. Though Lincoln was not even alive, didn’t look anything relatively similar to being sentient, those stone eyes saw through him, as if he weren’t even there.

He couldn’t stomach going to the Holocaust Museum. He couldn’t, even though he loitered outside for twenty minutes trying to will himself to make the move. Bucky was weak. His spine had gotten more fragile as he accumulated years.

The Washington Monument, though over five hundred feet in height, wasn’t all that spectacular. Looked like a huge white pencil, sharpened at the end. Dum-Dum might have bumped Bucky in the ribs and wondered, “Compensating for something, ya think?”

And Bucky would have called him a mook while nodding.

He took the turn at fifteenth and Constitution avenue, cutting past the Zero Millstone, a tall block of faded marble. And there, settled before him, was the White House. Large though it was, Bucky had always thought it might be bigger, that it would have to be to hold such secrets and scandals and the like.

(Once, a long time ago, he’d joked with Steve that if he ever got the chance to meet with the President, he’d ask if aliens were real.

Bucky had seen enough horrors down on earth: he was very sure that he didn’t need to know if extraterrestrial threats existed on the outer edges of the atmosphere. Some things were better left unanswered, after all.)

Still, he spared a long look at the pale building, at the columns and the classical architecture that it was composed of, before shuffling onward. He didn’t much feel like stopping in for a tour: if there was any place he’d be recognized, it’d be at the very heart of the nation’s capital.

The walkway surrounding the White House was littered with plastic wrappers, wet newspapers dampened long enough for their texts to drain onto the pavement and then dried, dying leaves that were crisp and hissed when they scuttled like tiny crabs past him.  He spotted a lump of cloth resting near the wrought iron gate lining the White House’s perimeter. Bucky might have gone and thought that lump to be a pile of oddly discarded laundry if, when he got a little too close, the lump hadn’t shifted and sat up.

If Bucky squinted, he could see a man beneath the layers of grime. There was a cardboard sign propped up next to the place where he’d been laying his head:  **NO JOB, NO MONEY, NO HOME. THIS IS YOUR VETERAN’S REALITY.**  Scraggly, knotted hair covered the man’s head and a majority of his face; just enough for a long nose and a pair of chapped, pale lips to be distinguishable through the thick frazzled strands.  

The man stared up at him, eyes going wide with recognition. He suddenly looked down, throat working, and it was only then that Bucky saw a newspaper with his face emblazoned on it right near where the man’s head had been, the sheet faded and worn with time.

More people were starting to come out of their warm cocoons and emerge into the city. Many walked right on by and didn’t spare Bucky or the man a single look.  _This was normal_ , he realized in horror.  _Walking right past a homeless man and a cripple and not even bothering to offer up the decency of making a bit of eye contact was considered_ normal _._ His stomach squeezed itself into a small ball, twisting this way and that with no direction in particular in mind.

He shuffled a few steps closer, squatting with enough distance between them that Bucky was out of the way of passerby, but near enough for the man to hear him. “How long have you been…?”

“Homeless?” the man asked. His voice was like sandpaper, rough from disuse. “Since seventy-two.”

Bucky didn’t say  _I’m sorry_. He knew, from experience, that hearing those two words strung together and dropped was enough to raise blood pressure real quick. What’s sorry, when you’ve got nothing? What’s sorry, when sorry can’t bring back what’s been lost? “I’ve got a truck,” Bucky said. “Any family I can take you to?”

“The wife kicked me out and kept my two babies with her. My parents died before I even went overseas. I’m an only child. The only other friends I had died in the jungles of that humid as fuck hellhole.” The man shuddered, dark eyes training on his knees, on the lumps of material that had fallen around his hips. “Sorry,” he said roughly. “After all you’ve done for—”

“Hey, now,” Bucky interjected, not unkindly. “We’ve all got our wars. No one is not bigger than the other.”  _Not as long as you’re emotionally devastated by it_. “What’s your name, pal?”

“Charlie,” he said. “Charlie McGregor.”

“Well, Charlie McGregor, you mind if I just sit for a while?” Bucky asked. “I really don’t feel like doing much of anything else, today.”

Charlie smiled. His teeth were yellow and badly taken care of, but Bucky could not help the wide curl of his mouth, either. “I’d enjoy the company.”  

(Before he went, Charlie telling him to get a move on before the night ushered in frigid temperatures, Bucky took all the money from his wallet except a fifty, just enough for a room for the night, and tucked it in the little tin cup that hadn’t even gotten half-filled despite it being settled in plain sight all day. Charlie didn’t say a word, but he saluted Bucky with a straight-back and a new light in his eyes.

Bucky really wished people would stop saluting him.)

He couldn't sleep once he got to the next hole in the wall motel in a lengthy line of hole in the wall motels and he ended up rolling out of bed and going to the night manager if he had a typewriter that Bucky could use. No, he wasn't a writer. No, he wasn't on anything that would trigger his body to be active in the middle of the night, he just needed a typewriter, please, damn it. He lucked out with a hefty device that took up almost all of the basic wooden desk in his room once he’d toted it back and chained the door.

He’d found a bit of spare stationary after a bit of rummaging in the desk for a few minutes and loaded the sheet into the typewriter. He’d not had a real reason to do any actual typing for a long time, not since he’d lost his left arm, but he supposed typing would be better than writing.

Bucky flexed his fingers, drew his body up so his back wouldn’t curve from slouching, and began.

He placed all his focus on what Charlie had told him; how people passed him on the streets and whispered behind their hands at him, how a brazen few called him a murderer and a baby killer, how potential employers saw that he was a veteran and immediately became weary to hire him. He channeled his fury over how Charlie had a dozen or so acquaintances who holed up in President’s park, half the time, because they were kicked out of libraries and the like come closing and couldn’t even afford to buy a cup of coffee at a diner so they’d not be kicked to the curb for not ordering and simply taking up a table. Bucky, though his wrist ached and with the longer he wrote, the more his fingers started to cramp, thought about how  _lucky_ he was—he had his sister, he had Peg and Daniel, had Diana, had a solid stream of money being emptied into his bank account, never went without food, and so on. He took so much for granted and… and all these men… So many that were just fucking  _kids_ …

*

His article appeared in the  _Washington Post_ the following Monday. He called Becca to see if she’d heard anything along the grapevine and she told him publication took so damn long because they wanted to be sure the signature at the bottom of the page was actually his and when an analyst from the Library of Congress confirmed  _yep, that right there is James Barnes’s John Hancock! Right there in cheap black ink_! the press, accordingly, exploded.

The piece held the same title as Charlie’s cardboard sign.

His message was so loud, it got even the President’s attention.

Bucky smiled for two and a half days, afterward. He’d almost forgotten what it was like to have a purpose.

 

-

 

_1976._

_*_

Because Bucky had very little self-preservation, he went to a little bookstore in Florida and he found copies of  _The Iliad_ and  _The Odyssey,_ the long, unabridged versions that were about as thick as dictionaries. He told himself he only purchased the volumes because he wanted to educate himself with a classical Greek tale, so he could find something to talk to Diana about even though he knew that one: that was a lie and two: he and Diana were the sort who could sit in silence together for days on end and it never be uncomfortable.

He wanted to immerse himself in the lives of the pair of long-dead men whom Diana once compared he and Steve to.

It took him hours to reach the point that Patroclus donned Achilles armor, that the man fought fiercely and ended up dead.

(Bucky cried when Achilles refused to bury his lover’s body, how his friends had to plead with him to put Patroclus to rest. He had gotten his act together enough that his vision was only slightly blurred and his face was hot when Achilles took an arrow to the heel. The tears came quickly again, after that.)

The thing that stood out most to him did not come until he was immersed in the epic journey of Odysseus. It was a quote, simple and not really important in the long run, but it clawed at his insides when his eyes traced it over it:

“ _Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this_.”

Bucky wasn’t sure if he could handle  _worse_.

He was, however, very quick to pack the books up in a dark part of his closet, behind Steve’s things and between his trunk from the war.

 

_Los Angeles_

_*_

When Daniel’s sixtieth birthday rolled around, Bucky dropped in at the Sousa’s quaint house in the suburbs, painfully cookie cutter. Kids biked in the streets, playing soccer and basketball, dogs barked in yards as a cat or two walked along the tops of the fences, taunting, teasing. Each home was two storied and had a shiny car parked in front of it. He was glad that through everything, Peg and Daniel had carved out a safe haven of love and joy. It made him a little lighter each time he spotted them together, aware of each other in that Been Together Far Too Long type of way where the teeniest of mannerisms can hold a thousand words.

The get-together was rather small, with about twenty to twenty-five people in all. Bucky recognized a few people from SHIELD, the Jarvis’s, of course, but other than that, most of the other faces belonged to strangers. He didn’t stay very long, at least, he didn’t occupy Daniel’s time for more than he thought necessary.

While he was around, he wanted to talk to Peggy, to Daniel and see how the kids were, how Steph was doing in that political science course at college, how Michael was faring with his job in San Francisco. Bucky shifted away from the mass of company occupying the living room and the kitchen and out into the backyard, a neat area bearing a decent-sized pool and an umbrella stretching over a table arranged with four chairs. He ended up standing near the side of the pool, watching the light wind poke and shift the surface of the clear blue water.

Bucky felt a little patch of heat fall in at his left and looked down to find a boy looking up at him with huge brown eyes and a floppy head of dark, wild hair. “Why do you only have one arm?”

Despite the seriousness of the question, Bucky couldn’t help but smile. Kids had no filter—they were sponges ready to absorb any knowledge the world could offer them. He squatted down, bracing his hand on his right knee. At this level, he and the boy were eye to eye. “That’s not the type of question you ask a stranger, buddy.”

 The kid didn’t look a bit deterred. “Tony Stark. You?”

Huh. So this was  _the_ Tony Stark. He had Howard’s eyes, Howard’s mahogany hair, Howard’s everything if Bucky were honest. He’d never met Maria: Bucky could only wonder if even Howard’s genetics were too loud to be overshadowed by anyone else. “James Buchannan Barnes, but all my friends call me Bucky.”

“See?” Tony said, pleased with his cleverness. “Now we’re not strangers. Answer the question?”

“I lost it.”

Tony’s nose crinkled. “You can’t just  _lose_ your arm.”

“I had to have it removed,” he amended.

“Why?”

“I got hurt really badly and there was no way to save that part of me.”

Tony squinted at him, reeking with curiosity. The kid was painfully endearing. “My Dad could make you one,” he claimed, little chest poking out proudly.

A snort bubbled up and out of Bucky. He dipped his head, let the amusement shake loose from him. “I think that’s the only topic of conversation your old man and I have entertained in the past two decades.”

The kid actually  _harrumphed_. Bucky couldn’t help but laugh. “Why don’t you let him?”

“Because.”

“That’s grown-up for  _I don’t have an answer._ ”

Bucky reached into the pool, moving quick enough that Tony would never see him go for the water until a thin spray was falling over Tony’s legs. The kid jerked in surprise, but refused to lose the expression of  _well? I’m waiting_. “If I let him build me an arm then he’d see me as a science fair project—not a person who’s been helped considerably by an act of philanthropy.”

Tony shrugged, a couple of dark hairs falling onto his forehead. He was a thin little thing. He might come up to Bucky’s hips if he was standing straight. Before Tony could come back with a reply, Peggy’s voice filtered out from the doorway.

“Anthony!” she exclaimed. “There you are!” Her eyes found Bucky’s and they grew tender. "Have you two been scheming?"

Judging by the way Tony was shooting him a look and shook his head in one little abortive motion, Bucky was supposed to say no. This is what he did. "He just found me out here," Bucky said. "I think we both got a little tired of all the grown-ups."

Satisfied, Tony folded his arms over his chest, peering up at Peggy a touch sheepishly. "Even if I'm tired of all the grown-ups, can I still have a piece of your angel food cake?"

She reached out and brushed her hand gently over his hair, fingers rounding up and curling beneath his chin. "Of course, darling. But you need to go wash your hands first."

Once they herded Tony back into the house, the kid charming the pants off of literally everyone they passed along the way, Peggy bumped Bucky with her hip. "So?"

"So?" he drawled.

"You've just met the infamous Tony Stark."

He passed her a butter knife for her to cut the delicate frosted creation with. She divvied up a generous portion, cocking an eyebrow at him in silent askance. He shook his head, and she cut off a slice for herself. "If that's you trying to find out what I think of him then you won't be disappointed. He's a real sweet kid, Peg. Doesn't exactly have a brain to mouth filter, but, he's young. My sisters were exactly the same way." Bucky paused, listening from the sound of footsteps pounding out from the bathroom and detected none. "He asked about my arm and why I wouldn't let his father build me a new one." 

Peggy dropped the butter knife and swore lowly. "Fucking, Howard."

Bucky barked out a surprised laugh. "Fucking, Howard," he agreed. "I ain't mad about it, though. He didn't know any better." 

"He's more intelligent than you think," Peggy said. "Mr. Jarvis and I have a bet running that Anthony will graduate college before he turns twenty." 

The topic of the moment burst back in without further prelude, grinning when Bucky bent and lifted him up, settling him on the counter so they were all very nearly eye-level with one another. Peggy held out the plate of cake, snorting when Tony made grabby hands. "What do you say when someone gives you something nice?" 

"Er," Tony grinned, flashing them a gap-toothed smile. "Shut up and take my money?" 

"Oh for the love of—," Peggy griped, glaring at Bucky when a sharp, bark of a noise ripped right out of his throat. "The words are  _thank you_ , Anthony." 

"Thank you, Anthony for the cake," Tony returned sweetly, edging off a massive frosted-loaded piece onto his fork. 

Right before it would have entered his mouth, though, Bucky bumped Tony's elbow and sent the forkful mushing up against his nose in a comical goop of white. 

 

 

(Years later, Tony would admit that this was the moment he knew that Bucky was one of His People.)

 

-

 

_1980._

_*_

That day at the Sousa’s was not the last time Bucky came in contact with Tony Stark. Often, when he dropped in at Peggy’s Tony was there, being carefully fussed over by the ever-loyal Jarvis.

“Are Howard and Maria aware they, you know,  _have a child_?” Bucky wondered quietly out the corner of his mouth. Daniel snorted and Jarvis frowned, the three of them crowded on the couch as Tony poked at an old toaster with a pair of pliers. Somewhere, he’d produced a light bulb, a butter knife, and a pack of gum. “I mean, I’ve never seen them in the same room with Junior, here.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Stark have very pressing schedules,” Jarvis said in return. “And I much prefer when they  _aren’t_ around Master Anthony. It makes things… easier, I suppose is the word I’m looking for.”

“I don’t mind him,” Daniel added. “I mean, Michael’s out of school and working in Pittsburgh and Steph’s going to graduate soon and with Peg out at the office, it’s nice to have company.” Tony had his tongue held between his teeth, the epitome of concentration. “Even if that company is pint-sized and more brilliant than everyone else in the room combined.”

And, as though waiting for that exact moment, Tony crossed a particular wire over another wire and the light bulb lit up. He punched air, whooping only momentarily, before he dove back in and began to dismantle his creation.

"You think  _that's_  impressive?" Jarvis said, practically peacocking with pride for the boy. "He built a working circuit board at four and an engine large enough to power your truck, Mr. Barnes, at six."

Daniel tipped a little closer as to be heard easier without letting Tony catch onto their track of conversation. "I'm worried, though. Once it clicks with Howard that his son is twice the genius he is, he'll try to throw him into some Ivy League school. I... I don't want him to grow up too quickly, you know?"

"We won't let that happen," and the  _we_ just slipped out, truly it did, but once he uttered it, Bucky found he meant it whole-heartedly. "He won't do any good at a public or private school. Smart kids, especially those at Tony's caliber? They're targets for other little assholes and I really don't want to have to gang up on a ten year old. Seriously. I don't," that shook a laugh out of Daniel, made Jarvis' shoulders sink a little from where the tension had dragged them up around his ears. "A higher-level school could do him good just as long as he's got a solid system of support and encouragement. We've just got to keep that up, make sure once he gets exposed to... whatever environment  _he_ picks to explore his talents, he doesn't get  _too much_ of it." 

Jarvis kept wringing his fingers, folding and unfolding them. "I think that is the best we can do," he admitted quietly. "I've loved that boy since the day he was born, you know. I won't have him... I won't have him hurting himself." 

True to dramatics, the device between Tony's hands caught fire, a small flame growing ever larger with each passing second. 

Bucky shoved to his feet. "Fire extinguisher still in the same place?" 

" _Yep._ " 

 

 -

  

_San Francisco, 1984._

_*_

The mass of reporters was the most he’d been exposed to for a very, very long time. Bucky had half a mind to ask for a pair of sunglasses to try and dull the intensity of the camera flashes and wondered if he might have been able to borrow one of the ridiculous pairs Tony wore. Peggy stood ahead of him, her figure outlined from the light of the stage and when he felt his palm get clammy, Bucky had to remind himself that he’d asked for this.

It was the first statement he’d made to the public in almost twenty years.

Peggy turned to him after one of the stage hands made a gesture. “You’re up,” she said.

He took a breath, smoothing a hand over his hair, down the clean shape of his jaw.

Putting one foot in front of another was something difficult, but once he planted himself behind the podium, he took his hand from his pocket, taking with it a photograph. The one of him and Steve, the one he perpetually kept on his person. Bucky worried at a dangerously fraying corner, brow furrowing as the crowd hushed, the flashbulbs of the cameras coming a minimum now.

 _This one’s for you, sweetheart,_ he thought and forced his eyes to train up and out into the heart of the crowd.

“Thank you all for joining me today,” Bucky said, rather proud that his voice did not waver or shake though he felt like he was about to vibrate apart at the foundations, like his molecular structure was just going to disintegrate. “Many of you have had questions as to why I kept so quiet and laid so low, but I didn’t come here to give you those answers. So. Sorry.”

There was an audible drop in hype. Bucky repressed an eye roll. He’d become a man of few outward expressions—he felt everything inwardly and that had always proved that though he did not grow old, he was still human. “The real point of my coming today is because in this great city, there is a rising epidemic only growing larger and larger with each passing moment. As of right now, over five thousand have died from the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome and—”

When it became clear just exactly what Bucky was attempting to throw light on, the room began to break into a fit of camera shutters and yelling. Some looked disgusted, some went for the route of  _I could be doing so many more things with my time_ , but a few, a rare few that Bucky took note of, looked as though he was offering them a divine gift.

“Sergeant Barnes!” one reporter called, one of the disgusted ones. “Why do you care so much about a bunch of queers?”

He felt his lips part over his teeth in a snarl.  _God_ he loathed that word, hated how people like this homophobic son of a bitch flung it around all the time. “Because,” Bucky snapped, nice and clear so there would be no room for misapprehension and he thought  _this is it. I’m really doing this. I’m actually doing this_ and he couldn’t be bothered to give a damn. He glanced down at the sepia-toned photo, traced Steve’s face with a trembling fingertip.  “I’m a part of that bunch of queers and I know goddamn well that if my best friend was still alive, he’d be three times as vocal as I am.”  

There was a grand moment of complete and utter silence and then a cacophony of noise erupted. Reporters seemed to produce microphones out of nowhere, the camera flashes tripled and the questions only grew more intense. He dampened the seam of his mouth. “I do not want to over-shadow the real issue at hand. There are people dying and the Regan administration is not doing anything about it—hell, the President hasn’t even uttered the word  _AIDS_ aloud! Sure, the AIDS virus is only affecting a small number of people, but at the rate it is claiming lives, in a decade or two, we will have lost an entire generation of young men.

“People have so little knowledge about the disease and that is why the numbers keep rising and the lives just keep getting lost. Because no one is speaking up and actually giving advice as to prevent contracting the disease—only a few are actually going about conducting experiments for treatments, but the likelihood of any of those ever being ready in time to save those already sick are abysmal. Education is so important, taking and crunching the numbers we already have is even more vital as to slow the spread or even help to eventually stop it.”

The noise was nearly deafening. He picked up the microphone and rapped it five, six times against the podium, never flinching even when nearly everyone assembled before him clutched at their ears and made various noises of anguish at the piercing sounds emanating from the loudspeakers. “Now,” he said. “This is not the time for fear, but for unity. Many would hold the narrow-minded belief that two men cannot love one another as a man and a woman can, as a woman and a woman can, but that is not true. As human beings, we are capable of love in all shapes and forms—it’s like that one equation we all learn in school: a plus b equal c—love is love is love and that is not something that can be stepped on any longer—”

A woman reporter, thin, bearing only enough height to reach Bucky’s chin, shouted: “Sergeant Barnes, when you say ‘best friend’ do you mean Captain Rogers? Are you insinuating that you and Captain Rogers were lovers?”

And that? That was like dropping a bomb over an already burning city.

“Could it have ever been anyone else?” he bit back. Bucky picked up the photo, cradled it. It was the original copy. He’d been so careful with it, treasured it. “I’ll see you all in the New York Times op-ed column,” Bucky snapped, the bite leaving him the moment he did so. His shoulders slumped, his head tipped down so his eyes were averted from the crowd. “I’ve got nothing left to give today.”

With that, Bucky dropped the microphone and left the cacophony of noise growing to a crescendo in his wake.

*

He did as promised and sent off a piece that was nearly six pages long, all detailing various hospitals that are doing their best to search for a cute to AIDs, explaining what to do and not to do, how to help, how to be vigilant. 

There was a Pride parade in New York. He led the line, full rainbow garb and all. 

 

-

 

_1985._

_*_

There was a headline in the  _Washington Post_ that caught Bucky’s eye on his walk to a little bakery a few blocks from his apartment. It read:  ** _TEENAGE PROTEGE TONY STARK HACKS THE PENTAGON! IS OUR NATIONAL SECURITY TRULY SAFE?_**

Bucky smirked, paying a dollar fifty for three copies—one that would be read, one that would be sent to Peggy, and one that would be framed. “Thatta boy, Tony,” he murmured, unable to crush the rush of pride that was running its course through his head. The kid was brilliant and, better yet, Bucky would be his left arm that Howard was having a coronary right now.

 

-

 

_1988._

_*_

He rolled to a halt in his pick-up, the same he’d had for years. At night, the canyon was empty of tourists as most couldn't stand the surprisingly low temperatures the desert produced. Bucky didn’t process much of anything anymore. If he was cut, he waited for the bleeding to stop; if he got a bruise, he stared until the nebula of violet faded into the olive of his skin; if he grew cold, he waited for the shaking to cease.

(It wasn’t healthy. He wasn’t so stupid as to think it was.)

Bucky hauled his things out of the truck bed, went about pitching a tent and arranging the kindling he'd picked up from a farmer's market back in Boulder. He'd eaten about a hundred miles ago and in anticipation for this destination, he'd lost virtually all of his appetite. His fire was a comfortable distance from the edge of the canyon, far enough away that even if he laid out beneath the stars and happened to toss and turn a great deal, he'd be safe from accidentally rolling himself over the side in the fit of a nightmare. 

He’d been perfectly aware, in theory that the Grand Canyon received its name from being, well, _a grand fucking canyon_ in size, but being there, actually looking out over the craggily terrain, at the weather-smoothed sides russet-in-the-sun turned deep violet and a saturated indigo once the light went away. The air was fresher, here, thinner, completely untouched by the grimy fingers of pollution and people—it was both so easy and so, so difficult to breathe, here.

“I made it, Stevie,” he whispered.

It had been a pact made twice: once, in the winter of nineteen thirty-nine when pneumonia had turned Steve’s mouth blue and his skin a delicate ivory, where a priest had came in an gave Steve his Last Rites, and Bucky had turned into a rabid animal, practically foaming at the mouth whenever anyone so much as suggested that he leave Steve’s bedside; then again in forty-four, before Diana, before the train, in a tiny boarding house in Ireland, after they’d had one another twice and were woven together, punch-drunk on each other’s presence. So many people had dreams of going to California or just some place that seemed an actual Eden on earth to get away from the actual pressing reality of poverty, illness, and war. Brooklyn was a well-worn coat, incapable of being misplaced, keeping them safe from the elements when they needed her to, but the Grand Canyon had always exuded an aura of warmth, of Paradise.

They were supposed to go when Bucky got a promotion down at the docks, when he could afford to purchase a couple of train tickets to get them there.

They were supposed to go when they got back stateside, whole and unharmed and a thousand miles away from the war that had torn them down from their high perches.

They were supposed to come _together_. 

“It took so much out of me to work up the nerve to come without you,” Bucky said, still no louder than a whisper. “I gave this place a wide berth for years, but I knew… I knew I had to face it. I _had_ to.”

The fire crackled, spitting hot sparks up and up and up, a creature of the midnight hours moved through the brush some twenty yards away. If this was Eden, he’d say the unseen being was a snake. Maybe a divine fruit would fall from the sky; maybe it would burn his hand with its intense starlight; maybe he’d choke on it when he tried to swallow it down.

(He knew too much. His forbidden fruit would be the gift of ignorance. He huffed. As though a God that was not even _his_ God would grant him such a mercy.)

Bucky stood, swaying from where his muscles had been locked for so long then abruptly loosened. Each step he took closer to the nearest ledge knocked off years of weight from his shoulders, shook the tears he’d been repressing from the corners of his eyes. He gasped when he was near enough to see the moon-touched land drop off into unforgiving shadow, but the sound was not made out of fear.

He leaned on the balls of his feet, his upper body tipping over the rim of the canyon. If only he just let go, if he allowed his muscles to unlock and fall forward. Diana wouldn’t save him, this time. There was no way she could. Not here, not now—

Bucky opened his eyes, staring down into the abyss. A few pebbles were nudged over the edge, whistling and giving these high-pitched little squeaks with more speed they gained. He felt himself jerk back sharply, falling back onto his ass and scrambling in the dirt to get his breathing under control. He clutched at the rough, dead plants beneath his palm, gripping them as though their miniscule roots would secure him to the earth. The world had, for a moment—a flashing, blinding moment—shifted into that ravine in the Alps, the fall that had cost him everything. His arm, his life, his  _Steve_.

Another sharp breath ripped in through his teeth, gasping on a swallow as his chest heaved and his hands shook. He didn’t fight his body, allowing himself to lie back in the orange clay, barely detecting the bumps and points of rocks pressing into his spine. The horizontal angle didn’t help his breathing, his throat working hard to push oxygen in and out through his mouth. He couldn’t recall any of the exercises he was supposed to use to break out of a panic attack, couldn’t recall much of anything but the warm blue of Steve’s eyes and the curve of his smile. 

“I’m sorry,” he wheezed out, each letter like a knife to his stomach, twisting and brutal. Savage in a way few things are. “I’m so sorry, baby, but I don’t know if I can do this anymore.” Bucky directed his confession to the universe as a whole. He was speaking to one person, though. After all that time, he never gave up hope that Steve could hear him. “I can’t keep living like this.”

 _But you’ve gotta_ , the wind seemed to sooth, rolling over him, causing the tears that streamed from his eyes and rolled into his hairline to freeze along his cheekbones. _It ain’t time yet, sweetheart._ His face screwed up into an ugly expression. Blood flooded his neck and cheeks, pooling up behind his ears so any noises the world made came in at a dull roar. He clenched his eyes closed for the span of a hundred labored breaths, swallowing back the taste of acid on his tongue.

He thought about what Diana might say if she were with him, what Becca might say, too (hell she'd threaten to drop kick him off the lip of the canyon herself), thought about how Peggy would probably punch him in the arm, even if she understood his motive for what he nearly did. Tony’s face flashed before his mind’s eye and he let out a gritty sob, clutching at his gut as though he could physically rip the pain away. There was no way he could leave that kid alone in this world. Last he’d checked, Tony was a blooming alcoholic and had a thing for anything white that could be injected or snorted. He was so young. Howard wasn’t going to do anything about it and Maria was so busy trying to manage Howard that she often put Tony to the back-burner. Tony had people who loved him, plenty of them, in fact, but Bucky couldn’t just place himself in the kid’s life and then retract that position. That wasn’t who he was. That’s not who he wanted to be.

Tony deserved more than that.

Above his head, the heavens opened and spilled their colorful gases across the sky, nudging forth diamond pin-pricks, exposing the glittering faces of stars that were long dead.

He lay there, wallowing in the dirt, until sunrise.

-

_Massachusetts, 1989._

_*_

Peggy had gotten word to him from Tony that Bucky was to report to MIT the second of May and to, under no circumstances, miss the date. Bucky, so long as he and Tony had been introduced personally to one another, had never missed a birthday or Christmas. He got a little sloppy around Thanksgiving, given that he’d become a permanent addition to Becca’s table and a favorite among her grandbabies.

But this was Tony’s presentation of final project before he was to walk across the stage of MIT to collect not one, but _two_ masters degrees.

Peg and Jarvis had been right—the kid was only nineteen and he’s on the road to graduating a prestigious institution. Bucky had never doubted their intuition and when he arrived, he brought the memory up for old time’s sake, laughing when he passed a crisp twenty to Peggy and she shot him an expression of confusion. They’d driven separately, as Bucky had drove all the way from Denver and stopped in Deerfield to take a shower at a decent Holiday Inn. Even then, he’d packed in another hundred and twenty odd miles of driving just that morning.

He looked nice and groomed well as to not reflect poorly on Tony: he cut his hair to the length it had been prior to shipping out, hacking off the limp ends that hung limp around his jaw and brushed at his shoulders and he shaved. The suit he wore had been ironed and pressed, not a wrinkle to be seen. It was a dark navy number, black shirt, top button undone with his shoes being shiny black things made of real leather.

“Is Howard…?”

“In Tahiti,” Peggy answered shortly. “Maria, too.All for business, of course.”

 _Of course_. He angled his face away so they wouldn’t see him roll his eyes. By means of a swift change of gears, he drudged up another question he’d been meaning to get the answer to. “You two have any idea what he’ll be presenting? I called him two days ago and for a kid who likes to talk, he wouldn’t budge an inch,” Bucky said, once he and Daniel had exchanged greetings and he’d embraced Peggy.

The two exchanged a look that suggested they knew precisely what lay ahead. “Not a clue,” Daniel said.

“No idea, either,” Peggy added.

Bucky sighed. “For a couple of former spies? You’re both terrible at pulling poker faces.”

They journeyed together across a flat, emerald lawn, mown to perfect smoothness towards regal marble steps, glancing upward at impressively thick Grecian pillars and the tall glass windows that made up the front of the main building. Peggy pushed Daniel in a sturdy wheelchair, a contraption that looked light and easy to disassemble. There was, Bucky noted, a small STARK industries logo on the back of the chair and it glided easily up the ramp off to the right of the steps. Into the depths of the facility they went, stopping only at reception long enough to get directions to area where Tony would be presenting.

But Tony was waiting for them. He strode across the lobby, hurrying forward to clap Daniel on the shoulder and accept a chaste kiss on the cheek from Peggy. He, begrudgingly, allowed Bucky to give him a tight hug, as though it was a hardship for him to accept affection out in the open.

To Bucky’s relief, he could not smell booze on Tony’s breath, nor were his eyes red or his hands jittery from any sort of drug inducements. He was, however, hyper as shit, shifting form foot to foot and talking at a mile a second. Bucky believed it safe to assume that the kid had just drank too much coffee or was running on very little sleep.

“Is the chair alright?” Tony wondered, like he didn’t notice the way his loved ones were observing him. “Oh, of course it is—I built it.” He paused, something in his expression softening when Daniel let out a quiet chuckle. “It _is_ okay, isn’t it? I installed plush seating and armrests, made the design from the least dense and most durable metal I could get my hands—”

Daniel reached out and took one of Tony’s hands in both of his. “It’s fantastic, son,” he assured. “I mean that genuinely. Hell, sometimes in the evening, Peg has to bribe me to get out of it and come to bed.”

The nerves flushed from Tony’s face, a blinding grin taking over instead. “Well come on, let’s get this prune juice-run wagon on the road!”

Tony’s set up was in a room large enough to be called an auditorium. There was a stage and curtains and a spotlight aimed on a podium, a display that was neatly covered with an unassuming white sheet. The shape beneath the sheet was long and rectangular. He believed it might be a glass case containing an unknown something and couldn’t help but joke:

“If that’s a probe under there…,” Bucky said slowly, unable to finish his thought as Daniel snorted at him and Peg rolled her eyes. Tony guided them to the very front row of seats, picking up the trio of placards that them declared RESERVED in Tony’s hurried script.

From there on out, the room filled rapidly with professors and other students and even a few camera-toting members of the press. They took this pre-show intermission as a chance to catch up, filling in one another on the latest gossip that had passed since they met last, which had been just over two months ago when the Sousa-Carter’s had twisted his arm until he allowed them to fix him a birthday dinner.

Just before the presentation began, Bucky saw a dark skinned man approach Tony, tapping him amiably on the shoulder with a slow grin rising on his features. Tony’s eyes blew open wide and the pair hugged like brothers. “Hey,” he touched the back of Daniel’s hand, pressed his knee to Peggy’s. “You two know the guy Junior’s with?”

“Oh,” Peggy said. “That’s his friend James Rhodes.”

“Tony calls him Rhodey,” Daniel added.

“And _Rhodey_ is the only reason Tony’s not burned down any of the labs here,” she concluded. They took to watching the two, saw how the line of Tony’s shoulders went lose and his animated hand gestures didn’t hold so much nervous energy as they had when he’d been spoken to by official-looking, uppity bastards with clipboards.

“He’s a good guy,” Daniel told him. “He invited Tony for his family’s Thanksgiving in Philly last year.”

“My inside source tells me that Rhodes plans to enlist in the Air Force. I think that, alone, is a good sign of character.”

Bucky smiled at her, all lips and only the barest hint of teeth. “Your ‘inside source’, huh?”

She shrugged. “What? This information comes directly from Anthony.”

Before he could toss back a reply, the dim lights overhead flicked on and off as a warning the show was set to start at any moment. They settled on, Peggy seated between the two of them, one hand holding Daniel’s, the other folded over Bucky’s kneecap as she delicately crossed her legs at the ankle. Bucky couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her wear her signature red lipstick.

There was a speaker that gave a brief introduction. What Bucky got out of it was the typical _our school is the greatest school to ever school and you should give us all your money. Oh, and by the way, here’s the students who worked their backsides off_!

And then Tony stepped onto the stage, throwing up his signature peace signs and flashing the crowd a manic grin. “I won’t beat around the bush by boring you with things you’ve heard a million times. You want to get to the good stuff, I get it, so do I, but my bestie made me write notecards and I want to at least humor him with the footnotes before I run off and get ahead of myself.”

Tony pulled an actual, thin stack of ruled notecards from his pocket, brandishing them for all to see. He lowered them down, glanced at the top one then resumed speaking.

“With a family like mine, with a _father_ like mine, there was no way I couldn’t have some sort of interest in technology. I always had the urge to know how things worked. I cannot tell you how much it would piss me off if, when I was a kid, I’d ask how something operated and someone—,” and here, he did actual finger quotes, “—“more intelligent” than me said: “It just does.”” He planted his hands on either side of the podium, gave a long look out across the room. His eyes flickered briefly downward, he changed cards. “But _why_? That is a question that led me here, but it is not the purpose of our being gathered this morning.

“When I was faced with choosing my final project, I made a list of things that I could do as long as the length of my, heh, arm and I deliberated until I was blue in the face. That was, until, the clouds seemed to part and angels started singing from above and the caffeine wore off and I just eenie, meenie, miniemo’ed it.” That got a laugh out the students, at least, most of which were nodding in empathy, sporting tired bags of their own beneath their eyes.

“I spent a majority of this year perfecting the device to the best of my ability, making sure all the kinks were worked out. Given what it is, it’d suck if after a year or two of use, a bad wire shorted and it all ended in flames.

“I took my much admired field of engineering and I crossed it with something that I’ve planned to do since I was a kid,” and he plucked the microphone from the stand and began to move towards the white sheet. The members of the press rose onto their toes as anticipation gathered to a head. Tony had completely abandoned his note cards. “Many thought I’d fall in line with Dad and try to create an actual flying car or a device that creates maintainable, emission-free energy, but that stuff will come later. I felt like it was only right, after everything, that _this_ be presented to you all today.”

On the word this, Tony tore the sheet away with a flourish and Bucky stared.

The arm was a metal thing, silver and plated with a— “Is that…?”

There was a shield painted on the round of the bicep, the blue, white and red catching the in the stage lights.

“That little touch was my idea,” Peggy said over the roar of the crowd, her and Daniel wearing twin smiles and leaning in at an angle to peer at him. “Anthony only just added it late last night.”  

On stage, Tony had not stopped speaking. “I’ll get to the specific functions of the arm in a minute, but I’m still not finished with what needs to be said. Someone I am very close to lost an arm to war before I was born and they’ve functioned perfectly fine with only one arm for as long as I’ve known them. Don’t put words in my mouth, Fox News—I know my friend is perfectly capable: he’s one of the strongest people I know. If he doesn’t choose to be the first to test this Stark Prosthetic, I will happily foot the bill for one of the many other disabled veterans that are in need of such an appliance.”

Tony looked directly at him and Bucky didn’t even have time to form the words _oh, no_ before— “I’d like to welcome James B. Barnes to the stage. Give him a huge round of applause, everyone.” Peggy stamped on his toes to get the gears in his brain moving again. He stood, fully aware every eye, spotlight and camera lens was focused on him: it only served to drive the press even wilder.

He met Tony in the middle of the stage and, up close, had no issue in seeing the anxiousness loitering in the younger man’s vicinity. “I know you’ve always had an aversion to Stark tech and the thought of said Stark tech hanging out the side of your body, but ah, surprise?” Tony wrung his hands together nervously, as though doubting that Bucky would be appreciative of his grand gesture. “It’s a light-weight alloy that, once connected to your body, will operate like a normal limb. Full-function. Water-proof, pressure-sensitive, the whole bit. You’ll need more than one surgery and will have to do a bit of physical therapy to be sure everything is functioning and I totally understand if you do— _oof_!”

Bucky slung his arm around Tony’s neck, pulling him close and pressing a hard kiss to the side of the kid’s head. “Thank you,” he murmured, packed full of everything he could not bring himself to say. “I-I’ll be do it. This means so, so much to me, Junior.”

Tony pulled back. They both pretended the other was completely dry-eyed. The flash of the cameras were enough to blind.

Neither of them noticed.

 

 

The weeks leading up to the actual operation were ninety-seven percent ‘sign these liability waivers so if you die, you cannot sue us’ and ‘here is what is to be expected of you: therapy schedule, diet plan to bulk up a little, exercise regimen, etcetera’ and ‘hello, yes, we’re from a science slash health journal and want to know if we can do an in-depth interview once the procedure is completed’. The remaining three percent was Bucky wishing he could plug in the god forsaken arm himself and wishing he’d never agreed to take Tony up on the offer.

(He’d have never said no. He could be realistic about that much.)

 

 

When he came to, Bucky’s nose itched like a motherfucker. Like, in all his years and he’d had _so many_ of those, his nose had never itched to this degree.

He raised his hand to bump against his right nostril and jerked when he felt cool metal touch his skin, instead. Though his head was all swimmy and his body was light as a feather, he was lucid enough to hold his hand a few inches in front of his face and see it was, indeed, metal.

He rolled his fingers.

The metal rolled, too.

He clenched his knuckles.

The metal clenched, too.  

Conclusion: _that’s your arm._ He wrapped his right hand around his left wrist and gave a little tug, as though to prove that the limb was genuinely attached to his shoulder and wouldn’t pop off with the slightest of pressure. It didn’t pop off. Bucky smiled.

The door to his room creaked open and Junior’s blurry form appeared. It was a good enough distraction for his hand to fall limply to his lap and for him to shoot a lopsided grin at his favorite kid.

“I’m the only young person you know,” Tony scoffed, sitting down a Mylar balloon that said IT’S A GIRL! in baby pink letters and a teddy bear with its left arm in a sling down on a table already cluttered with flower arrangements. Bucky didn’t even _like_ flowers. Flowers had always been Steve’s thing: once he’d got the serum, Steve couldn’t get enough of flowers and their bright colors, would purchase them from any vendor they could find, pluck them from the ground and hoard them in-between pages of the regulation books in his trunk. “Holy shit, you’re so out of it right now, I could totally draw a penis on your face and you’d not even try to stop me.”

Bucky giggled. “ _Penis_.”

“Buckaroo, what _even_. You’re a gay icon and you’re cackling like a prepubescent twelve year old at the technical name for a male’s genitals. I mean, I didn’t even break out the bad boys like dick or DNA gun or baby maker. I could’ve even went with meat injector, purple helmeted warrior of love, schlong dongadoodle or—,” and by this point, Tony was laughing just as hard as Bucky was. He could only faintly feel the muscles in his stomach clenching and unclenching harshly from the strength behind his mirth. “H-Ho-kay, big guy. We’re definitely going to lower the doses of your meds.”

Junior asked him a few questions once they managed to pull it together enough to form clear sentences. Stuff like did the arm pinch at all? Was he hurting? Was the weight too much?

Nope, nope, and nope, he claimed, popping the P every time. 

“I got to ask,” Tony said, rubbing a hand through his hair. “I mean, I feel like already _know_ the answer, but I want to have it confirmed that way I won’t have to come up to you in twenty years at some socialite shindig and try to pry it out of you. Okay. Here goes.” This was only uttered due to Bucky cocking his eyebrow up high, leveling Tony with a _spit it out_ sort of look. “Dad pressed for years trying to get you to let him build an arm for you. Why did you cave for me?”

Bucky beamed, warm and light from the morphine. “Because I know you did what you did for love. You dad would have treated it like a project, not a way of helping a one-armed schmuck out.”

The kid’s nose crinkled. “Ew, ugh, god, okay. Drugs get you all soft and mushy, old man. I’ll leave. I’m leaving. If you drool on yourself, I told the nurses to get a photo.”

What a little shit.

 

-

 

Daniel passed at the turn of the seasons, the gradual trip from autumn to winter. He’d fallen when Peggy was at work. He’d hit his head.

Peg’s kids stayed for a day before and after the funeral, as did a few family members from Daniel’s side of the family who had been particularly fond of Peggy and Daniel both. Tony hadn’t uttered a damn word at the service, his eyes had been big and brown and dry. Bucky had tried to speak to him afterward, but he’d just shrugged off the hand Bucky put on his shoulder and pushed right into the sunlight, climbing in a car with a driver already at the wheel.

Jarvis had passed nearly a year previous, Ana two years prior to him. It was just he and Peg to hold down the Tony wrangling fort.

He tried not to think about that as he reentered her sitting room. She’d been so damn strong for so long, hadn’t even blubbered a bit so long as he’d been there, but the moment he had come back from the kitchen with a cup of tea for her, she’d burst into tears.

“T-That’s Daniel’s favorite mug,” she whimpered, face creased with upset. What little makeup she wore ran down her face in inky lines, smudged in swatches of peach and baby pink.

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” Bucky said, settling the cup down on the coffee table as it was too late to return to the kitchen and exchange mugs. She’d seen the mug already. “Come here.”

Her body had grown frail with time. Her hair was entirely silver and she still wore it neat curls. Bucky wrapped both his arms around her, cradled her.

“I haven’t slept for more than a few hours since Daniel died. I-I grew so used to the sound of his breathing paired with mine that now that half the song is gone, I go half mad with it and come downstairs just to sit awake in front of the television. And I can’t stand not tripping over his slippers that he always left in the middle of the bathroom and I can’t listen to a single song by Louis Armstrong without feeling like I might be sick.”

He brushed a tender hand over the back of her head, cradled her skull in the palm of his hand. “It’s the little things,” he said and though he tried to hold his voice steady, it cracked something fierce all the same. “Their smell, the way they cut their food, how… how they curse when they drop something in the shower, or press their toes to your calves when they get cold in the middle of the night.”

Peggy’s breathed hitched hard. “I’m so sorry I ever tried to get you to put away your hurts,” she said softly into the side of his neck. “Please know I never truly meant what I was asking of you, not until now.”

“I know.”

Less than twenty hours later, the media went wild: Tony Stark had been put in the hospital due to a drug overdose.

___

_Washington DC, 1991._

_*_

The car crash was sudden. Bucky and Diana had been out for breakfast in San Francisco when they’d heard about it on CNN the morning after. He hadn’t  was throwing what few belongings he had in his duffle the moment the anchor said there was no word on how Tony Stark was stomaching the news of his parents demise.

He drove directly out of the city and into Los Angeles, a nearly six straight hour trip until they arrived at Peggy’s house and found a sports car parked haphazardly in the middle of the yard. The doors were flung open, the key still in the ignition even as its driver was curled in a ball on his side, wrapped around a bottle of Hennessy. He ran across the yard and dropped down to his knees at Tony’s side, touched at the pulse in his neck and felt his body shrink with relief when Tony swatted at him.

Granted, he missed by a mile and almost took out Bucky’s nose, but he was moving and that was better than he’d been anticipating. Bucky left him long enough to move around the side of the house and get the spare key Peggy kept under the fifth stepping stone from the pool, nudging the ceramic block back into place once he’d done so.

Diana had carefully backed the luxury vehicle out and parallel parked along the curb behind Bucky’s pick-up, turned off the car and stood at Tony’s side, speaking to him in low, gentle sentences.

“You’re fucking hot,” Tony slurred, jabbing a finger at Diana. “I like you.”

She must have encountered intoxicated men enough in her past for such things not to bother her as her expression didn’t change in the least. If anything, it made her eyes soften even further. Bucky wriggled the key to catch her attention, swiping the bottle of top-shelf liquor from Tony’s limp embrace just as Diana scooped him into her arms. Making quick work of the door, Bucky undid the lock and helped Diana arrange Tony on the couch, tugging off his shoes, getting him a blanket from the linen closet.

“I’m not an invalid,” Tony snapped when Bucky took his hand and wrapped it around a glass of water. “I c-could have gotten t-that myself.”

“No, you’re not an invalid,” Bucky told him, holding his hand a little harder as to drive the point home. “You’re grieving, Tony. We’re both trying to help you do that safely.” He’d chew the kid out for driving in his condition at a later date. “What can I get you?”

“Her number,” Tony said, wiggling an eyebrow at Diana suggestively. Her jaw tightened a fraction, but she said nothing. Bucky shot her an apologetic look. This, he knew, was not what she’d anticipated when he said he wanted to spend a few days catching up.

“That’s not going to happen, pal. Anything else?”

Tony squinted at him. Bucky was abruptly reminded of the tiny boy he’d first met over a decade ago, all wild hair and mistrust and his stomach dropped through his pelvis with the force of an elevator with the cables cut. “My booze. Gimme.”

He forced himself not to think of the fact that he was feeding into a bad habit and tried to hold onto the image of giving a weeping baby a pacifier, instead. Diana passed him the crystal bottle from where he’d deposited it on a table in the entryway and flinched when Tony downed a great portion as though it were water.

They remained in silence, unnervingly heavy silence, for well over twenty minutes. He and Diana communicated mutely through half-mouthed words, blinks and microscopic shakes of their heads. She wished she could do more to ease his pain; Bucky desired the same, both could think of no better option than to stand guard over him, make sure that his grief did not become destructive.

“Did you know that he never stopped looking?” Tony prompted after the grandfather clock upstairs rang out the next turn of the hour.

Bucky’s brow furrowed. “Can you reiterate for me, Junior?”

Tony gave a grand roll of his eyes, sucked his teeth, gave another pull from the bottle held between his hands. “ _Howard_ never stopped looking for the grand old _Captain A_ -fucking- _merica._ He had a whole branch of Stark Industries completely dedicated to developing sub-zero sonar technology in the hopes he could bring his _greatest achievement_ home.” Tony snorted and it was a bitter, bitter noise. “It’s all he ever talked about. Cap this and Cap that. None of the rest of us mattered.”

“Tony,” Bucky tried softly, speaking past a column of thorns that had spontaneously generated in his throat, reaching out to curl a hand to Tony’s wrist. When there were just mere millimeters between his skin and Tony’s, the young man jerked away, curling into himself.

“I hated him. I hated Cap. I know he was like your boyfriend and all, but Jesus _fuck_ the hours Howard spent waxing poetry about how great the guy was. Aunt Peggy told me they might have had ten conversations the whole length of the war a-and just because his Vita Ray machine activated the serum, he thought Cap belonged to him.”

Bucky wanted to put Tony in a sleeper’s hold, wanted to ease him into unconsciousness just so he’d stop talking for a second. Each revelation, this toxic series of demons that poured violently from Tony’s mouth, made Bucky’s stomach twist that much more fiercely. “That’s enough, Tony.”

“My mom didn’t deserve to die,” he said, too loud, matter-of-fact, as though in the last hour alone, he’d given it a great deal of thought. Knowing the way his mind worked, he probably had. Bucky was selfishly grateful for the change in topics and had to stamp down on the mouthful of acrid guilt that hung in the tiniest crevices of his mouth. “And he spent so much of his time away from home when all she wanted was to be with him—she actually loved his candy-ass! She was good. Like Peggy. My mom was so good. She wasn’t Mother Theresa or anything, but god damn it why did she have to get taken from me, too?”

“I don’t know,” Bucky whispered. “I don’t know, kid. I wish I could tell you, but I genuinely have no idea.”

Tony seemed to have run out of words. His mouth met the bottle. He rolled on his side away from Bucky, from Diana, and curled into himself. He did not so much as twitch when Bucky carefully draped the afghan over him.

 

 

Peggy arrived around ten thirty, smoothing a gentle hand over Tony’s hair. “Bloody hell, Barnes,” she whispered, after she’d tipped in and smelt the fumes rolling out of Tony’s parted lips. “Did you let him drink an entire brewery? He smells like the underside of a London pub.”

“I watched him the whole time,” he assured her, looking to Diana for back-up. “What was I supposed to do, Peg? His parents were just killed and it was either let him get in a car and kill himself, let him pop a handful of pills and kill himself, or watch him like a hawk while he did shots and, after six, putting water in the glass instead.” Peggy deflated at that.

“How long has he been out?”

“Since nine.”

She nodded, toeing off her heals and kicking them aside beneath the coffee table. “Join me in the kitchen, Barnes?”

He stood from his vigilant perch on the arm of the couch only to turn to Diana.

His old friend drew the question from his lips before he could apply volume to it. “I’ll watch him,” Diana said, folding herself into a comfortable position in the one corner of the couch that Tony wasn’t sprawled in. She shot them a smile. “It’s not degrading, to be placed with the duty of watch-woman. It shows that I am trusted here and I am thankful for that.”

Bucky still tipped in and brushed a kiss to her forehead, squeezing her hand in thanks as he followed Peggy into the kitchen. He’d drive them somewhere warm and bright once this cloud of sorrow had passed over, once he knew Tony would be alright.

“Were there any signs of foul play?”

“No,” she said, pinching the bridge of her nose as she leaned heavily on the counter. “There were indications of the car striking a deer and a blood trail leading into the woods to back up said theory. I handpicked the team that did forensics: no poison, no bullets in the tires, no signs of injury exerted before the crash that could make it look staged. It is what is appears to be.”

“An accident,” Bucky concluded.

“Yes.”

It would almost have been easier had the wreck been a result of an assassin’s successful hit, would have given them some goal, some endgame to work towards instead of sitting around doing nothing. He shook that off. With that theory cleared, a more important matter lingered still. “How are we going to tell Tony?”

“We simply stick with the truth.”

Bucky sank down onto one of the kitchen chairs, nudged one out with his foot for Peg to do the same. Tony was already dealing with enough as it was: he’d be expected to step up to the reigns of a billion dollar company tomorrow morning, would be expected to make a formal statement to the press, would be the target of the media for weeks, if not months until some greater tragedy took place. Bucky kind of wanted to bolt back to the living room and not let Tony out of his sight for the foreseeable future, wanted to barricade the doors so no one would be allowed in.

It took a great deal of effort to keep his voice low. “Fuck, I hope he sleeps till next Tuesday.”

“My sentiments exactly,” Peggy sighed. “The good news is Howard was very thorough. He already had his funeral planned and paid for and, if I read what I did correctly, all the assets in his will are organized. Maria’s, too. Anthony won’t have to lift a finger.”

“Not until he’s got to step into his old man’s shoes and run Stark Industries,” Bucky mumbled miserably. “I’d do it myself if I knew a thing about business. Hell, _Junior_ doesn’t know anything about business—it’s the technology he loves, not the numbers and figures.”

She nodded slowly. “Do you love that boy, Barnes?”

He stared, barely stamped down on a high laugh of disbelief. “Would I have driven four hundred miles and dragged my friend whom I’ve not seen in almost two years along for the ride while refusing the stop for bathroom breaks if I didn’t?”

“No,” Peggy allowed softly. “I suppose not.”

“Why would you…?”

“I’m not long for this world,” she murmured, reaching across the table and covering his flesh hand with hers. He was glad for that as even though he was used to the workings of the metal hand, he wasn’t sure he was focused enough to keep from squeezing too hard, not tonight. “And I don’t mean to say things like this on such a dark day, but it’s the truth, James, and it’s a truth that needs to be heard and digested as soon as possible. I have cared for that boy as though he were my own son, as did Daniel and Jarvis and Ana. I’ve gotten old, my dear and soon I’ll be dust yet again. But you? The only age you’ve shouldered has been in your mind and through your eyes. There will come a time when you both are the only remnants standing and when that time comes, you will need each other more than anything.”

For her to take a truth he’d been scarcely willing to admit, package it up and drop it hard on his solar plexus was enough to send his teeth on edge. He sank his metallic fingertips into his knee hard enough to bruise.

“I won’t let anything bad happen to him. At least, nothing I can’t keep him from myself.”

Peggy squeezed his hand a final time, withdrawing her hold all in the same movement. “You’ve no idea how much of a comfort that is for me. And for the record, you’re like an older brother to him—he’ll need you now more than he ever has before.”

“I know that. I may not live right around the corner from him, but I will be there.”

“I know that, too.”

Their conversation was rapidly running out of steam. The stress of the day was catching up with the both of them and he could see Peggy wanted nothing more than to change into a more comfortable set of clothing, wanted to turn off all the lights and just be alone in the dark for a bit. He had to know, though. It was crucial he get an answer.

“One last thing,” Bucky said, the statement as weak as he physically felt. “Did you know? About how Howard hadn’t stopped trying to find Steve’s plane?”

Her mouth tightened. She nodded once, curtly. “I tried to keep it from you. I didn’t want to tell you and raise your hope, not when there was the slightest chance of those hopes being crushed.”

With that admission to be properly examined at a later time, as he could only deal with _so much_ in a handful of hours, Bucky went back to the living room. He didn’t leave Tony’s side until dawn.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think, if i weren't sticking with Greek themed names, I'd call this chapter "Bucky's sadness errands". 
> 
> ALSO I SWEAR THAT THIS FIC IS GETTING HAPPIER. I SWEAR. Two new characters are being introduced in the next chapter. Judging by the years, can you guess who they might be? I'll be #impressed if you can :) 
> 
> Leave a comment and tell me what you think!


	5. Odysseus, part III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If the plaque had said ‘IN LOVING MEMORY OF STEVEN GRANT ROGERS’, Bucky might have sent a short blurb to Rebecca for her to pass on to a trusted colleague, but it wasn’t for Steve. It was for a public figure, for the star-spangled suit that Steve donned, not the man within it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, ya'll. This chapter is going to run through 1993 up until 2011. THE NEXT CHAPTER IS THE BIG REUNION I SWEAR!!!! :)
> 
> Without further ado...

_1993._

_*_

He felt eyes on his back as soon as he stepped out of his motel room in the ass-end of Kansas. It had been a while since he’d seen the World’s Largest Ball of Twine: Bucky was a man of warped humor and much free-time—it had seemed like a good idea, to return to visit such an attraction. Tony had just gotten out of rehab from a cocaine stint. Seeing such a thing was an inviting distraction, a mind-numbing forty-five minutes of an over-ecstatic tour guide rambling on about the history of twine and how such a massive lump of it had come to be located in Cawker City.

Bucky didn’t let his pace falter, moving to the ice machine instead of his truck. Someone had left an empty ice bucket near the freezer, allowing for Bucky to pluck it up and start mechanically filling it.

When the presence got too close for him to be comfortable, he wedged the metal scoop deep into the ice and whipped around, ice bucket turned makeshift bludgeon at the ready.

A tall black man with an eye-patch held up his hands, fingers encased by sleek black leather, just as he wore a black leather trench coat, sturdy black boots. There was a firearm at his hip and from the silence in his steps, there was probably another weapon or five on his person that Bucky could not immediately pin-point.

“What do you want?”

The man did not lower his hands. “Just to talk, Barnes,” he claimed.

Bucky didn’t loosen his grip on the bucket’s handle. “I want a name before I say anything.”

He got a sharp _look_ for his troubles, watched as the man slipped his hand into the right side of his coat and pulled out a wallet, tossed it to Bucky with perfect aim. “Nicolas J. Fury,” the man claimed as Bucky flipped open the, unsurprisingly, black leather wallet to see that this was indeed the name on the SHIELD ID card inside.

He relaxed his stance, but only enough that it didn’t appear he’d swing at the drop of a hat. “How’d you find me?”

“We never lost you,” Fury countered. Bucky didn’t allow his brain to shoot into overdrive to immediately pick apart his most recent memories, to search for any person he’d found to be odd or falling into the background of whatever setting he’d chose to occupy a little _too_ well and opted for clenching his jaw.

“Thorough,” Bucky murmured. “No wonder you’re one of Peg’s favorites.”

“I do my job,” Fury told him. “And Director Carter greatly appreciates that.”

“Still doesn’t explain why you’re here. Why now? If you’ve kept such a close watch on my location all these years, why didn’t you reach out sooner? I’ve got a date with the World’s Largest Ball of Twine in less than an hour and I really don’t want to miss it. Once in a lifetime experience, making eyes at that twine.”

The expression that rose to Fury’s features was unimpressed at best. “I won’t keep you from your date. But I don’t want to have driven out here for nothing.”

Bucky folded his arms over his chest, the ice heaving around in the bucket as he did so. He raised an eyebrow that pointedly said _well? Get on with it_.

Fury was not a man who had to be told twice or encouraged verbally. “This world is rapidly becoming a technological cornucopia—first computers, phones you can put in your car. Microsoft is set for a huge software release in the next year or two. The future becoming less human and more robotic and that opens up a can of threats that we’ve never seen.Not to mention old threats. You think that just because the Cold War has ended and the Berlin Wall has been ripped down that Russia isn’t still attempting to build nuclear weapons to surpass us? That there isn’t carnage left behind from countries ravaged by communism? You’re a public servant, Barnes—I know you keep up with your current events.”

If Bucky ground his teeth anymore, he’d wedge his molars up into his gums—whenever he’d shave, it would be over the lumps of marrow and every time he sniffled he’d be doing so past his canines.

“You’re well-respected, Barnes,” Fury pressed, tone never altering. “You’re a man beloved by the public. Your voice could be spread to help many.”

Bucky narrowed his eyes, straightened his back so he was a few inches taller. “Director Carter is like family to me and I understand the foundations of what SHIELD lays on, but I’ll pass.”

Fury’s mouth thinned. He squinted, a near-discernible shift in his facial muscles. “Don’t you think Captain Rogers would want you to pick up the mantle where he was made to leave it?”

“Don’t,” Bucky snapped, arms falling apart and taking a step forward so there was little more than five feet between he and Fury. The other man didn’t so much as twitch. “You didn’t know him. You don’t know what he’d want.”

“I’d like to think that he’d be a little ashamed that you’re spending your days at places like this, wasting time going to attractions like the one you’re scheduled to see.”

 _Steve and I always supported each other in everything we did,_ Bucky nearly bit back. _He’d be fucking proud I haven’t blown my brains out._ “I told Peggy long before you even considered getting into the intelligence community that I didn’t want to fight anymore. War took nearly all I had—I refuse to step foot into a new age of fighting. I do my writing, submit my opinion with the hope I can shed light on a little known situation or open people’s eyes when they refuse to see. I won’t be anyone’s puppet, Fury, take that and go.”

He chucked the wallet back at Fury, growing only more irritated when the man caught it as though it had been thrown without heat. He let out a heavy breath, Fury did, and shook his head in half-amusement, half-disappointment. “It’s a shame, Barnes,” Fury said. “I hope we’ll see each other again.”

Bucky’s metal arm whirled dangerously by means of response, his flesh hand clenched to the point every tendon stood out pale and white. He didn’t trust himself to speak, not with Fury’s half-assed attempt at manipulation still rattling around in his head. This man wasn’t even a _thought_ when Steve was alive—he had no idea of the dynamic he and Bucky had formed, how Bucky could literally watch paint dry all day and Steve would walk by, press a kiss to his hairline, and squeeze his hand in encouragement of the pastime.

(Their standards had never been high: so long as the other was safe, so long as they were close enough for visible confirmation of said safety, it had always been enough.)

“I’m not joining SHIELD,” Bucky told him. “And I’m not sorry you drove all this way for a no.”

He stood, dejected and a bit cold despite the late summer heat rolling off the pavement, until Fury’s silhouette faded into the trees around the motel, until the bucket of ice had nearly melted at his side.

Bucky missed his tour time to see the World’s Largest Ball of Twine. He was on the road by noon.

 

-

_1994._

_*_

Tony, without fail, always tried to get him to drop in at whatever elaborate home he was spending the summer at when the Fourth of July rolled around. And in return, Bucky, without fail, always politely declined.

“I’ve got my own traditions, Junior,” Bucky said, repeated the line like he was delivering it for a film. Take seventeen, a little lighter on the water-works this time, Barnes. “I’ll see you the following weekend, okay?”

Despite his typically blunt-tongue, Tony knew when to go overboard and when not to. This was a topic that was sensitive to even _breathe_ at: Tony got the same way whenever someone brought up Maria. He knew better than to press and Bucky loved him so much for that.

“If I see you in the news for doing something stupid, I’m going to be real disappointed,” Bucky told him.

He could practically hear Tony’s eye roll. “One: I’m always in the news. Two: I’m always doing stupid things. They negate each other. I’ll try to keep out of the stony lonesome, then. That good enough?”

At this point, Bucky would take what he could get. “Just be safe, Tony. Can you do that?”

A loud, long-suffering sigh. “Fine, Bucky Bear. I won’t get into any front-page worthy felonies.”

“Or misdemeanors.”

“Good _bye_ ,” Tony said pointedly, and right when he was about to lower the phone to the cradle, Bucky heard him blurt: “Be safe, yourself, old man,” which was about as close to I love you he’d ever hope to get.

Most of the parties that Tony throws are packed with people Tony, himself, barely knows, with the only regulars being the hired security, Rhodey, and a new addition to the Stark wrangling team, Virginia “Please call me Pepper” Potts. They’re over-the top to the level it’s nearly a circus, trying to navigate the floor and actually get near Tony without stepping over or on interested parties who want nothing more than to lure Tony closer to drugs, to alcohol, to _worse_. Bucky let out a weighted breath he hadn’t realized he’d been trapping behind his teeth.

Tony may always be that little snaggletooth kid in Bucky’s head, but in reality was almost thirty years old. He doesn’t need Bucky dragging down the party by loitering in the corner the entire night, spending most of the evening sneaking out onto whatever balcony is closest to avoid the numerous passes made at him by party-goers. It’s a bit disturbing, really, having people young enough to pass for the age of his grandkids try and flirt with him and thus the constant removal from situations that allow for such instances to occur.

If he’s honest, Bucky’s tradition of sorts doesn’t even really qualify as a tradition. It’s more like an… annual grieving road-trip. He started it up back when he’d first started to visit Rebecca in Red Hook, first at that initial timid Thanksgiving then at Hanukkah a few years after that, then on his niece and nephew’s birthdays, then on Passover, then just because. He hadn’t been so under his rock that he didn’t catch word of the official memorial of Captain America going up in Prospect Park, the heroic figure it cast in thirteen feet of looming bronze. It had been a huge story in the media, his opinion on the matter had been wondered, but he didn’t utter a word.

If the plaque had said ‘IN LOVING MEMORY OF STEVEN GRANT ROGERS’, Bucky might have sent a short blurb to Rebecca for her to pass on to a trusted colleague, but it wasn’t for Steve. It was for a public figure, for the star-spangled suit that Steve donned, not the man within it.

While Bucky had been on Themyscira in those first initial months of recovery, Peggy had dug around and found the same graveyard where Sarah had been buried, arranged a whole funeral of just people who’d known Steve to see an empty box placed in the earth. The headstone was smooth, white marble and it had hardly weathered in the many years it had been standing.

No matter how many times Bucky saw mother and son’s names side-by-side, he couldn’t help the way his eyes began to prickle sharply. He knelt, laying the pair of bouquets across his lap before picking off the many weeds that cluttered Sarah’s stone, much more battered than her boy’s. The spring he and Steve lost her had been a rough one financially: they’d scraped together enough to get a generic slate-gray tablet to identify the precious women they’d lost too soon. It crumbled at the edges, here and there, but it was readable nonetheless.

He laid the bone-white lilies in front of Sarah, the full, beaming red roses in front of Steve, pressed a kiss to his fingertips for the both of them. There were bent-up envelopes, teddy bears, candles, plastic shields, and dying flowers that Bucky had to navigate around: there were a select few that recognized Steve as _Steve_ , as being more than a comic book character, as, instead, being a man who lived and breathed and loved and died. The graveyard was quiet in the way only a place of great sadness can be, empty due to it being a national holiday, made more so given there is an actual ceremony in front of the Captain America statue, followed by fireworks on the Hudson.

(Bucky should have known that being an immigrant’s son, that having a pride to rival ancient heroes of Shakespearean tragedies, that being just and honest and loyal and having all that topped off with having been born on the day the Founding Fathers decided to declare independence from Great Britain that Steve was always destined to become Captain America. Really, all the signs were floating around him, had always been in existence if he thought about it.)

He opened his mouth, licked his lips, tried to make his voice work and made a soft noise when he did not succeed. If he could speak, he’d have said _I wish I could touch you_ and _You wouldn’t believe the price of coffee these days_ and _You’d better sit down, doll, I’ve got another year’s worth of Tony antics to entertain us_ and _god I should have tried harder to get back to you._ Bucky fell onto his backside, tucking his knees up under his chin. If things had worked out like they were supposed to, he’d be worm-food, too, would’ve never walked out of the European theater. He’d say _I’m sorry I’m not with you right now_ and _it’s going to be a while yet, sweetheart,_ because he still held true that killing himself would devastate Tony, hurt Diana, Peggy, and Rebecca, would keep him from further getting to know his extended family. He’d say _I love you so much_ and _I’ll find you in time_.

Bucky leaned in until he could flatten his metal hand over the stone without straining. He swallowed past the acrid taste polluting his mouth, looked through the haze of mid-summer tears. “Happy birthday, Stevie.”

He didn’t get up until he could hear the fireworks crackling in the distance.

 

-

 

_1996._

_*_

Bucky had been sent out by Rebecca to get a can of gravy because she’d forgotten it in the midst of all the mayhem that is a grocery store the day before Thanksgiving. She was wearing more noticeably around the edges with each time Bucky saw her; sometimes she forgot the day, other times it was the year. She’d once been so startled to hear his voice on the other end of the telephone that she’d dropped the mouthpiece on her end and then she’d clambered to pick it up again, whispering his name like she was communicating with a ghost when she dared to speak.

He knew what these lapses in memory meant. Though they were very few and very far in-between and only concentrated on tiny things, he knew. Bucky, resolutely, did not think of them. Bucky trained all of his attention on lightly swinging the plastic bag with the single can of turkey gravy along at his side.

And he would have continued to walk back to his sister’s place without interruption, humming along to a song quietly beneath his breath, if it hadn’t been for the noisy scuffle he heard unfolding from within the depths of a grimy alley.

Five men in tracksuits were kicking another guy in the gut, taking turns at using his head as a soccer ball, as pretending his legs were bubble wrap and trying to pop every vital part. “Hey!” Bucky barked sharply. “What kind of game are you playing, huh? Five to one? Math may not be my strong suit, but even I know that that’s not fair.”

One of them snapped something in Russian and two of the goons cut away from the rest, descended on him with their arms spread and ready to tackle him.

They were not prepared for him to use the plastic bag and the can of gravy nestled inside as a makeshift bludgeon. Neither of them had time to draw their weapons, if they had any at all, before they were smacking hard into the grimy concrete. This unexpected turn of events had the men kicking the poor abused bastard on the ground stilling. The ringleader delivered an order in their mother tongue. They fell into formation.

Bucky smiled, all teeth and no humor. He rolled his left shoulder.

Just like the Berlin Wall, they fell hard and quick, strategically placed blows sending them all sprawling to the ground in a heap of overlapping limbs. He kicked the biggest goon’s head back sharply when he tried to sit back up for another round. He surveyed his handiwork, raising his flesh hand to dab lightly at the faint sheen of sweat he’d worked up and saw—

“Fuck,” Bucky swore. “My sister is going to kick my ass.”

The can of gravy, tragically enough, had taken one for the team. Its contents were dripping slowly out of the extremely dented side and leaked from one of many tears in the plastic bag.

“I’m fine,” the man grunted, rolling onto his hands and knees. “I mean, you know, if you give a damn.”

“Oh, I give a damn,” Bucky retorted, “But I also give a _bigger_ damn to givee seein' that my little sister is going to shove a cane where the sun don’t shine because you just so happened to be the reason the turkey is going to be so dry.”

“Hey, buddy,” the man retorted, pinching the bridge of his clearly broken nose between his thumb and forefinger, “no one told you that you had to play hero and bust their asses for me. I mean, thanks for the Good Samaritan work, but seriously. They jumped _me,_ not the other way around. I could have handled it perfectly fine by myself _._ ” He held Bucky’s eyes as he jerked the bone in his nose back into place with a small _pop_. The man’s eyes immediately began to water, but his expression didn’t crack even as all the blood ran from his face.

Bucky let out a small huff. “That hurt?”

The man groaned, high and long. “Fuck yeah it did,” he groaned, clutching at the lower-half of his face in both hands. “Awh, _nose_.”

“You have anyone I can call?”

“Dude, I literally live, like, right here—,” and he brandished his statement with a gesture to the fire escape to their left. “I’ll be alright.” He blinked hard, swaying just enough to be noticeable. “I think.”

“Are you sure about that, Mr.…?”

“The name’s Clint Barton,” Clint Barton claimed, sticking out a bloodied hand for Bucky to shake. He raised an eyebrow, flicking his eyes from the drying-red to Clint’s face and back before Clint changed hands. He didn’t flinch when metal fingers clasped around his. “And I’m alright. Seriously. Don’t let all the blood fool ya.”

“I’m James Barnes,” Bucky said. “But you can call me Bucky.”

“I gathered that from the fuck-off metal arm,” Clint said, much brighter now that he wasn’t getting the tar kicked out of him. “S’a honor to meet you, man.”

“Thank you,” he said, dipping his head and kicking at the stirring body of one of the men at their feet. “Why’d these bastards jump you anyway?”

“Pulled me out of my apartment, dumped me in the alley _then_ jumped me, more like,” Clint told him, pointing again at the brick building only this time aiming his digit at the agape window on the fourth floor, the latch visibly broken. “They’re tracksuit mafia. Russian. Like to think they’re tough but they’re really just a bunch of dicks. They’ve got beef with me because I refuse to sell this building to them.”

“Huh,” Bucky said in regards to the baggy red tracksuits and the generally douchey expressions each of them wore beneath their general unconsciousness and physical pain. “Let me guess—you’re interfering on their turf and they don’t like that very much.”

“I’m not too worried about me,” Clint assured him, going a bit hard around the edges. “Hell, they really don’t count as an actual gang. What concerns me is the families in this building—there’s a bunch of kids and I don’t want any of them getting caught in the crossfire.”

“You informed the police?”

“Yeah,” Clint said. “But sometimes they’re too slow. I’m plenty equipped to deal with any threat these asshats throw my way.” He smiled, grinning with a bit of blood on his teeth. “I never miss my shot.”

And Bucky mirrored his smile with too many teeth. “Defending the little guy,” he said softly. “That’s real honorable—I mean that,” Bucky added quickly when Clint shot him a disbelieving look. “Seriously.” Before he could give Clint the needed paused to reply, Bucky suddenly had to wonder: “It’s Thanksgiving—you got any plans?”

Clint blinked at him with the one eye not actively swelling shut. “Um. Other than attempting to watch football and eating my weight in pizza? No?”

“Good,” Bucky said cheerfully. “Since my dear, beloved can of gravy is half in this plastic bag and half on the ground, you’re going to help me battle Whole Foods and then come with me to explain to my sister why I’m late.” He threw the gravy and the bag in the nearest dumpster, clapping the metal lid closed before starting for the entrance of the alley, stepping on each wannabe mobster on his way out.

Clint had not moved.

“Come _on_ ,” Bucky groused, mouth twitching. “I didn't almost die, like, a dozen times in the war to have a sixty-five year old woman hit me on the elbow with a wooden spoon. Would you _really_ do that to an American hero?”

That got Clint to springing into action.

("Relax, pal, I only had one or two near-death experiences. Don't give me that face: you were the one getting your face pounded in in an alley. I ain't no hero.")

Whole Foods was wild. There were only three lines opened with wild-eyed people zooming around like chickens with their heads cut off. Bucky had a single-minded purpose, though, Clint trailing closely at his heels. He was able to sweep in between a soccer mom, a harassed-looking man of about fifty, and two elderly women on those scooters with the baskets in the front for the last can, tucking it under his arm even as he snagged an abandoned arm basket.

“I thought we just needed gravy.”

Bucky’s eyebrows shot up. “You can’t show up at my sister’s looking like you’re about to bleed out,” he objected, throwing in the first box of adhesive bandages that he saw. “She’s a lady of standards.”

“You’re the one who invited me,” Clint grumbled.

“And _you’re_ the one who accepted,” Bucky retorted in return, dropping in a pouch of baby wipes when he spotted them a few aisles over, grabbed a bag of frozen peas an aisle after that. “You’ll scare the children with that shiner.”

“ _You’ll_ scare the children.”

“Clever,” he snorted. “I think I lost brain cells from that.”

It took nearly thirty minutes to get through the checkout lines. He felt people looking at him, at his face, at the way he kept his left hand tucked away into his pocket, and sometimes he’d smile, but more often than not he just sort of ducked his head and averted eye contact. No one asked for him to sign things, which he was thankful. Clint fingered through _People_ magazine, humming a Christmas carol beneath his breath.

They took a cab and spent ten bucks for actual fare, another five because it was a holiday and the poor guy looked like he was about point two miles away from offing himself if he didn’t get to go home. The moment they were both situated on the curb and making to start the walk up the sidewalk to the modest brownstone, Rebecca whipped open the door, hands on her hips—the image was softened marginally by her apron, which was warning yellow and proclaimed: CAUTION! HOT STUFF COMING THROUGH, a gag gift from her husband.

“James Buchanan, you are _late_.”   

Clint had the wits to swallow audibly.

And that was how Bucky brought Clint Barton to Thanksgiving at his sister’s house with a knock-off brand of gravy and a story to be told half a dozen times over the next few hours because everyone was interested in the man whose face was covered in Hello Kitty Band-Aids.

 

-

 

 _1998._  

*

There are moments where Bucky loves Tony so much, he aches with how much he wants to _do_ , to fill in the edges where Howard had so miserably failed. Then there were the times when he kind of wanted to punch him in the throat with his metal hand. An example of such came when that tragic as hell movie with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio swanned into theaters with Tony, for some reason unknown to Bucky, was invited to the premiere.

When that particular scene, the one with Rose, aged and tired and worn, sighed, “It’s been eighty-four years,” Tony bumped his knee against Bucky’s. Once, twice, thrice. He would have gone for a forth time, but Bucky slanted a narrow-eyed look at him. 

He’d known Tony long enough to be aware that when his eyes got to glinting and the corners of his mouth began to twitch, there was something up. Bucky kept watching the film, aware that they still had to toe carefully around the paparazzi—who was he kidding? Junior could blink and someone would snap a photo of it—as they filed out the theater, that he had to keep Tony on a short leash at whatever after-party the kid dragged him to.

Tony wondered: “Do you know her?”

Out the corner of his mouth, Bucky said: “Get fucked, Junior.”

The sound of Tony cackling had over half the theater turning to stare. Bucky, resolutely, did not look at a single one of them. The plot was too good to avert his concentration.

(After, once he dragged Tony out of the many post-show parties, Tony demanded his driver blare theCéline Dion song that served as _Titanic’s_ theme at top volume, poking his head out the roof of the limousine, boosting half of his upper body out, too. He bellowed that line about being king of the world before the driver took a hard left and he ended up losing his balance, tumbling back into the interior of the limo, falling ass over ears face-down on the ground.

Bucky, of course, invoked laughing rights.)

 

-

 

_New York City, 2001._

_*_

It was like Pearl Harbor all over again. The rush of cold, the soul-lurching panic, the fear. It was one of those days that would never be forgotten, that would, to quote FDR, live in infamy as a wound in the soft underbelly of America. The news knew just as much as the public did, which was to say that there were terrorists involved, men flying planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon and even a few other hijacked aircrafts that had yet to be accounted for.

Bucky wasn’t in the area when the Towers came down. Hell, he wasn’t even on the coast. He’d been in Portland and watched the devastation unfold via blurry camera footage on a fuzzy television screen in a dinner. The waitress who had been bringing him coffee off and on for the last hour had dropped her serving pan.

She mouthed something silently to herself, glancing at Bucky and the couple of other patrons who looked back at her in concern, then bolted off for a phone. He heard her say something about a brother with a pair of babies in Manhattan and he sent a thought to a Savior he didn’t quite believe in anymore, a _this girl seems real kind—you’d better have protected her family_. _Especially since you didn’t save part of mine_.

He had raised his cup to his lips to down a mouthful, but the prayer sent the lining of his mouth going bitter. He did, however, pay his bill and left the girl a hundred dollar tip.

Bucky drove to the Portland International Airport and made his round of calls froma pay phone. Thankfully, it was mid-morning and not nearly as crowded as it could’ve been. Peggy was alright, shaken just like everyone else was, sure, but she was made of steel and grit—she may falter momentarily, but he had no doubt she’d get back up, swipe the dust and the blood from her palms, and carry on. She’d seen a great many things that could invoke trauma, but this? This was the sort of crisis that threw even the strongest off kilter.

“I’ve just gotten off the phone with Anthony,” she said, strained around the edges. “He was in Malibu at the time. He’s alright. His building in Manhattan wasn’t even scratched.”

Rebecca assured him that her and John were fine, that they’d been at home and out of the city when the planes hit. All the kids were fine, though Rikki was a little shaken, as she _had_ been in the area and she’d heard the great boom of metal crashing down, down, down as the first Tower’s foundations faltered and collapsed. He called her, too, curled a hand to his throat to try and ease the clench of pain, there.

“There was so much smoke, Uncle Buck,” she whispered, absolutely no emotion in her voice. She was a girl of energy and spunk, so much like Becca in her youth it hurt. He had never heard her so shaken. “And there are so many documents and papers from the Towers just floating around on the _other_ side of the city. God, the _smell_ …”

“I’ll be there soon,” he promised, flicking his eyes out the airport window to see a sleek Quinjet being readied. This was a favor Peggy called in from Fury given that all flights into and out of New York were halted for the time being. “I’ll be there soon, honey, it’s alright.”

He got in contact with Tony after five attempts. Bucky trusted Peggy’s word plenty, but he still needed to hear Junior’s voice, needed to hear confirmation from Tony, himself, that he was safe and sound in California. “Hey,” Tony said lightly, “Hey, Robocop, hey.”

“Are—?”

“Okay? Yeah, I’m fine. You?”

Bucky nodded, voiced this affirmation by saying: “I’m in Portland, yeah, I was clear.”

“Good. T-That’s real good.” He paused. “And the other herd of Barneses?”

“They’re alright, too. I’m at the airport—I’m heading to New York now.”

Once one of the airport employees flagged him down and informed him his ride was ready for take-off, Bucky hitched his bag a little higher up on his shoulder, moving back outside to drive his truck up into the storage bay of the Quinjet. He was thoroughly surprised to see it was Clint who was manning the cockpit, slanting a sheepish smile his way when Bucky slid into the other remaining pilot’s seat. “Er, surprise?” 

Bucky squinted at him.

“In all honesty, I thought I told you about my day job _years_ ago.”

Bucky squinted harder, so he could only see a slit of Clint and a hint of his own eyelashes. “I don’t see how you just happen to forget to tell someone what you do for a living.”

“I didn’t forget,” Clint objected, starting them down the runway and nodding in satisfaction when Bucky slid on a headset and strapped in. “It just… never came up.”

“Uh- _huh_.”

Clint huffed. “Stop busting my balls, man, I don’t get paid enough for that. Hell, I don’t get paid enough to play cross-country cab-driver to you, but hey! Here we are.” He slanted Bucky a look, apologetic and exhausted. Before he could say something, Bucky raised his hand—words were exchanged without him having to put sound behind them. Clint nodded then Bucky and they sat in silence until he could see the familiar New York City skyline laid out before them, black smoke still marring the horizon, like sharp smudges of charcoal.

They didn’t stick around for pleasantries. Clint flicked the switch to have the loading ramp falling open and Bucky jogged to his truck, shoving the key in the ignition and hitting the gas before he even fastened his seatbelt. He drove with a single-minded focus.

He could still remember the frantic way people in his and Steve’s building had scrambled to the grocery stores, to the banks to take out money when the news bulletin alerted them to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It had been around lunchtime—Bucky knew that for a fact because he’d been eating a terrific roast beef sandwich bought on a pay raise from down at the docks and it had turned to ash in his mouth with every new detail provided by the press. The Japs had come by air and by sea, real early in the day when no one would have suspected anything.

Bucky shook himself, one of the few people on the road to actually go _into_ the city rather than rush out. The attack had been about five hours previous, but the steady chatter of updates told him that there were still plenty of help to be done, that people were still stuck in the debris.

He had not been in a warzone for quite some time. Bucky had not missed the panic or the delirium that came in the midst a particularly brutal battle or stepping over those who had not made it through the rain of bullets or watching the percent that did get hauled out of the ashes to be mended or quietly cradled on a cot as the last bit of life in them slipped away. But this was once his city and he once could travel the backstreets with his eyes closed, and she needed him. It was the least he owed her, for having been away for so long.  

Manhattan was a wreck, like some sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland of abandoned vehicles. He saw a teddy bear lying in the street, hoped whatever child had left it behind had survived to miss it. Bucky picked it up, tucked it gingerly into his bag, and kept moving. The worst of it was around the bases of the Towers, where everything was covered in a fine layer of white dust. There were so many fire trucks and emergency crews that Bucky could not count them all. Men and women alike were moving to and from the still-blazing crash site, covering their mouths with gas masks or damp rags if they couldn’t find the former.

Whispers struck up as he pushed up his sleeves and started to carefully step over rubble. An officer, face swollen from crying and sporting black marks from his hairline to his chin from being so close to the smoke and debris, tried to warn him back. Bucky held up his hands, fished his wallet out of his pocket and showed his ID.

It only served to make the cop dissolve into another round of silent tears. “Go ahead, sir,” the man whispered. Bucky nodded, clapped the guy on the shoulder as he passed. He picked up his pace once more, nudging through the crowd to get to the most authoritative looking guy in a fireman’s uniform. “Is that…?”

“Holy _shit_ …!”

“…metal arm, it’s gotta be him!”

Bucky touched the man’s arm, watched recognition float to the surface like sand drawn up from the bottom of a riverbed, left to waver and settle again. “What can I do to help?” Bucky wondered softly.

“The debris,” the worker answered immediately, trying and failing to keep the wideness of his eyes at bay. “Some of it is too delicate to move mechanically, but if one of us tries to shift it, it won’t budge. We need to try and get out anyone who might be trapped.” A sudden idea seemed to occur to him. “Have you got enhanced hearing?”  

Bucky nodded.

“Good. We really need that right now.” The fire chief—and the patch on his shoulder did, indeed, identify him as chief—flagged a young woman down. She looked as grief-stricken as the rest. “Rachel, here, will get you the proper equipment.”

Most of the debris was either great, heaping piles of industrial-grade metal or drywall, half crumbled like mounds of dusty snow. Rikki hadn’t been exaggerating—there was a god-awful smell and that was likely why the first piece of gear he was given was a gas-mask-esque device. He fitted it around his nose and mouth, smoothed his hair back to buckle on a hard hat of his own.

Once he was all strapped and buckled up, Bucky told the fire chief: “Point me in the direction you need me most.”

(His picture was plastered on the bottom half of the cover page of the _New York Times_ , right below the caption: “ **BUCKY BARNES RETURNS TO NEW YORK”.** He would write a reply a few days later once they were reasonably sure no one else was trapped within the rubble, once the notification boards around the city grew jam-packed with HAVE YOU SEEN ME? posters and Bucky couldn’t make himself eat for fear he’d be sick if he consumed anything heavier than oxygen. He made sure he said things in the piece like: _this is a dark time, yes, but we must band together in the face of evil, not fall apart_ and _the sect of Islam that performed this attack is not an accurate depiction of the Islamic faith—the true followers of Islam are people of peace and love, but the radical group who attacked our country is not a reflection of them_ and _we will bounce back from this, just as we managed to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps to beat Adolf Hitler. We will prevail_.

It didn’t feel like enough.

During times like these, things like this never were.)

*

There was a light knock at his door around eleven thirty in that evening. Bucky had just stepped out the shower and wore only a wife beater and a pair of old sweatpants that were more sweat than pant at this point. He plucked up the handgun he kept tucked beneath his pillow, more of an old habit than a precaution, and called: “Who is it?”

“Diana,” came Diana’s voice, pitched soft as to not break the silence that had fallen over the hotel once night fell.

He undid the lock and chain and pulled open the door, immediately stepping forward to wrap her up in a hug. She returned the embrace with just as much strength, smoothing a peck over his cheekbone in greeting. Bucky didn’t need to ask what she was doing here—same reason he was.

“Have you eaten? The room service here is pretty decent.”

She shook her head. “I’m alright.” Diana toed off her heals, a pair of simple, black pumps, and settled on the end of his bed. For a woman of such strength, she looked dangerously close to collapsing.

He sat down so their knees were pressed together. “Don’t make me get down on hand and knee and beg you to tell me what’s wrong.”

Diana bumped her leg into his, just enough to make the mattress bounce. She was pale. Her lipstick looked far too brightly pigmented given the lack of blood flowing beneath her cheeks. “I know what these signs mean, when man begins to turn against his fellow man. This will be more than just war. I may not be out in the public eye as you are, but I don’t wish to be so far away if something else of this caliber occurs again.”

Bucky had long since been able to fill in the gaps of things that were not said. He did so aloud: “And you think it will.”

Diana’s smile was small and grim. “I know a pattern when I see one,” she told him. “I wish I hadn’t seen it before. I wish I could know I’d never see it again.”  

Still. “There’s something you’re not saying, though.”

Tiredly, Diana rolled her eyes. “I’ve said everything, James—I think, in your old age, your hearing has gotten selective.”

He could not help but bark out a laugh of surprise. “You’re one to talk. Hang on a second, I hear the phone ringing—oh, yes, it’s Odysseus with his Trojan Horse. He wants to know if you’d like to head to dinner. He asked for you by name.”

She groaned and dropped her head on his shoulder, the left one. Diana didn’t flinch when her cheek made contact with the cold metal and he wasn’t sure why, after all this time, he still expected her to. “I’m moving here, to New York,” Diana surmised. “I’ll be closer and more easily contacted in the case of another emergency such as this one.”

“Well,” Bucky said, curling an arm around her shoulders and pressing a kiss to her hairline. He aimed for a touch of light-heartedness where there had been so little in the past week. “I’ll be glad to have you on my six.”

“Please,” Diana snorted. Her nose scrunched up, her brows rose. “If anything, you’ll be on _my_ six—I need someone to help with the apartment hunting, after all.”

 

-

 

_2003_

_*_

In all the years that Bucky had known him, he had never seen Clint Barton, actual human disaster _stunned_.

Of course, that might have had something to do with the redhead beauty he’d brought in, but Bucky tried to give him the benefit of the doubt given Clint hadn’t gotten much sleep in the last thirty-six hours. “You doing alright?” Bucky murmured, clapping him on the shoulder.

Clint mumbled incoherently into his near-empty coffee mug, tipping his head so he could see Bucky’s lips. He tapped his mouth. Ah. He’d taken out his hearing aids, then. Probably between the initial defective process and security briefings or the bringing of an international assassin who went by the codename of Black Widow into his home.

An explanation:

Natalia Alianovna Romanoff would only speak to Clint, given he was the one who gave her the chance to come in alive rather than taking the shot that would end her life. She did not trust him, did not trust any of them, but they had kept her under secure observation for over three months, weeding out any of the remaining triggers planted deep within the recesses of her head, testing her to be sure she’d not abruptly change her loyalties. Once Clint had pulled him aside and let him know what was going down, how Fury was keeping Romanoff in a cell with no windows and plenty of cameras, Bucky convinced him that holding her in solitary confinement was no way to integrate her.

Fury was worried that if they extended too much trust in Romanoff too soon, she’d exploit it and high tail it out of dodge before they could hope to catch her.

After several lengthy conversations—both over the phone and in person—Fury relented to allowing Romanoff to stay at Clint’s place in Bed-Stuy as long as there was constant surveillance, two to four agents watching the place at all times and Romanoff was not allowed a lethal weapon or any sort of weapon-like thing that could be altered to have life-taking capacity.

(Clint joked he didn’t want to empty his apartment of everything. “I know she could probably end my life with a paper clip and an empty chip bag, but… I don’t know, man, even though there are a dozen bells and whistles telling me not to, I trust her. And… and I like to think that down the road, she might be capable of trusting me back.”)

His fingers formed a few quick words, holding out his hands for Clint to see him clearly. _“How is she settling in_?”

“ _Good_ ,” Clint signed, throwing back the last of his near-deadly sludge that was supposed to equate to coffee but really resembled motor oil more than anything. He immediately went about readying another pot.

“ _How long until you think Fury will give you both free reign?_ ”

Clint snorted. “ _Do you_ know _Fury? Could be a week, could be never._ ”

Bucky couldn’t fault him for his accurate assessment. “ _Any…_ ,” his hand stilled, trying to figure out the right way to form his question. Clint watched him, patient, the coffee pot gurgling at his elbow. “ _Has there been any incidents_?”

“ _Other than her having a nightmare, my trying to wake her up from the doorway and still ending up with her trying to choke me out with her thighs, then no_ ,” there was something loitering around the fine lines of Clint’s face, something that Bucky had never seen in him before. He didn’t want to name it right away, not before he’d gone and studied it a bit longer.

(If he were a man that gambled, he’d wager a bet that it was blooming affection.)

“ _How long until you think Fury will pass her for active duty_?”

Clint grimaced. “ _Under a month, if all goes well._ ” Though the pot was far from being finished, that didn’t stop the other man from plucking it up and pouring him out a mug, then two, then three. Bucky was given a mug that had its handle broken off, a few chips around the rim. “ _Sugar or creamer?_ ”

Bucky held up his pointer finger to indicate the first choice. Coffee had about the same effect as alcohol did on him, which was to say, none at all, so he typically drank it for taste. No matter how many spoons of sugar he added to his cup, it didn’t take away from the God awful taste.

One didn’t get the title of best archer around without being a stickler for details—Clint grinned at his obvious disgust. “Pal,” he said aloud, gesturing for Bucky to follow him. “You didn’t have accept the coffee—just because you’re conditioned to be polite upon entering someone else’s home. You could have told me to fuck off.”

“Old habits,” Bucky said, putting a bit of emphasis on the formation of the words with his mouth. “You know how they go—or they don’t.”

He got a lopsided grin at that, watched as Clint used one hand to juggle the pair of mismatched mugs and the other to scratch at the back of his head. “Now, where are my futzin’—?”

Bucky held up Clint’s hearing aids from where they’d been dropped into an empty coffee cup in the living room, smirking when Clint grinned sheepishly. “I told her I had a friend stopping by,” Clint informed him once each little flesh colored device was tucked into his ear. “She’s probably even heard every word we’ve said, so.” He shrugged, gesturing for Bucky to follow him down the hall to the door right next to Clint’s bedroom.

Clint knocked twice, listened intently for a noise that Bucky could not hear, and pushed in.

The room was sparsely furnished with only a bed, a simple bed frame, a mirror, a writing table, a matching chair, a pair of curtains drawn over the windows, and a lamp. There were no photos or posters or even any tiny porcelain figurines to give the space some sort of identity—just neutral hues and the potential for growth.

Romanoff was sitting opposite a little yellow puppy, of which was sporting matted fur and only had one eye, if the closed lid was any indication. This didn’t stop its little tail from thumping wildly and from its elated pouncing on a brand new squeaky toy. Clint’s jaw was hanging open, just slightly, and Bucky did the decent thing and reached over to pinch the other man’s chin between his fingers and brought his lips together.

Clint slanted a look at him, nodded in silent thanks.

“I’ve named him Lucky,” Romanoff said, her voice a dry, husky drawl he’d never heard outside the silver age of cinema. She glanced over her shoulder. “James Buchannan Barnes of the 107th infantry, Howling Commando, presumed dead and found to be miraculously not-so before becoming a public servant. Fitted with a Stark Industries prosthetic after a shockingly touching  presentation at MIT by Tony Stark, himself.” She nodded, just once, like she was satisfied. “Have you tried Barton’s coffee? It’s awful.”

The way Clint’s face split into a dopey grin, the apples of his cheeks taking on stains of color, left Bucky only capable of letting out a laugh, the sort that was drawn from the pit of his stomach and punched out of him. He knew that look. Hell, he’d _invented_ that look. _Holy cow. Clinton Francis Barton, renowned human disaster, is infatuated with a former KGB agent turned potential SHIELD operative_.

He hoped things would work out between them. Barton was a good man and though she covered it up like it did not exist, he knew the stance of one bearing a great deal of baggage, positively afraid to let their guard up in case of the event of some sort of attack on the soft, underbelly of their existences came into play. If anyone could get Romanoff to settle in, to feel more human, it’d be Clint.

Bucky projected his movements clearly, making a small show of squatting down to offer a metal finger for Lucky the one-eyed pup to nibble on. Upon further inspection, there were small patches of fur missing from the little guy’s belly and backside, nothing that would harm him, but enough to cause Bucky’s eyebrows to furrow.

As Lucky hopped over to inspect Bucky’s silver digits, he met Romanoff’s green eyes. He felt like he was being placed under a microscope at high power and would have straightened up had he never been around strong women like Peg and Diana and Becca. He didn’t falter. She seemed to relax when he didn’t.

“How did you even get out the apartment without any sort of alert going off?” Bucky wondered.

“How did you get past the agents?” Clint pressed.

Her smile was large and feral. “I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

“You’re joking, right? Buck, please tell me she’s joking.”

Bucky shot her a smile, because he could see a caged animal even when that caged animal was attempting to be the ring master. “’Course she is.”

Romanoff lifted an eyebrow at him, perfectly plucked and even. “Do you _really_ go by the name Bucky?”

“I do,” Bucky said. “It’s a nickname I’ve never quite been able to shake.” _Never really wanted to_.

Her lips pressed together long enough for her to dampen them, before they lifted at the left corner, twisting a bit in an emotion that he could not identify.

“Where’d you find him?” Clint wondered after a beat of Bucky and Romanoff both watching each other pensively, joining their little squatting party and actually _giggling_ when Lucky clambered to get to him. The pup jumped right onto his thighs and planting two paws on Clint’s shoulders, licking delightedly at Clint’s neck and chin. “He doesn’t smell like he was messing around in an alley.”

“His owner is now indisposed,” she said, shooting them both a dangerous grin that contained more teeth than Bucky thought was possible. “I thought he might find himself in need of a home.”

Clint curled a protective arm around the pup, easing back so his ass was planted on the floor, legs sprawled out and slightly bent at the knee. One of his socks had a hole in it, his biggest toe poking through. The socks were violet. “Tell me I’m not going to turn on the television and find out that some dickwad died in a mysterious way in some seedy back alley.”

Her lip twitched. “You, yourself, just admitted that he was a dickwad.”

“Nat,” Clint said and though Bucky could tell he was trying for serious, there was no way to miss his short laugh.

“I didn’t kill the guy, Barton,” she swore. “Ruffle his feathers a bit? Yes. Cut him up and leave him to bleed out like a pig in a butcher shop? No. Tempting, but no. Have a little faith.”

“I have plenty of faith.”

 _And this is when I politely dip out of this situation,_ Bucky thought and did as he set his mind to by making himself scare as soon as humanly possible. He did of course leave his number with Romanoff in case of an emergency, telling Clint to be careful, said: “I’ll try to send your dog-child toys in the mail.”

“You’d better, Barnes. You’ve gone and imprinted on him—he’ll expect you to pay your part of the child support in treats and squeaky toys!”

 

-

 

_2007._

*

“Tony.”

“Nope.”

“Tony.”

“Notta, Buckaroo. Office hours are nine am to three pm on days that don’t end in Y and given it’s Tuesday and it’s after eight, _no_.”

“ _Junior_.”

Tony stopped, whipping around to throw up his hands. “Literally what do you want from me?”

Bucky didn’t like that attitude, not one bit, but that was not what he was so concerned with. He could tell Tony to watch his tongue until his own tongue fell out his mouth and he used the ASL that he’d picked up to communicate with Clint more easily until his perpetually youthful hands grew gnarled and packed with arthritis and Tony would still pointedly ignore him.

“All I’m trying to say is that you need to be careful,” Bucky told him, mouth thinning at the corners. He wanted to take the man by the suit-clad shoulders and give him a shake to hopefully settle a handful of the pieces that had been knocked lose back into place. “All these wild parties, Junior, and the drugs? The alcohol?”

“You forgot to drag me because I quote have slept with seven-eighths of Los Angeles end quote,” Tony barked back.

He couldn’t say _I didn’t forget_ because that would only make Tony stop listening more than he had. “I’m just trying to get it through that head of yours that you mean a great deal to me and I don’t want to wake up one day and see that you’ve gone too far!” Bucky said in return, a little too loudly for how close they were standing. “Mother of God, Tony, you’re like my son, and I worry about you. If that’s so hard to grasp, then I have no on earthly idea how you ever made your way through MIT.”

Tony huffed, flicking his eyes up from the ground to catch Bucky’s. “I feel like you’re really helping the rumor that you’re just an old man that yells at clouds all day.”

“Don’t turn this around on me,” Bucky said, half-pleading, half-exasperation.

“I get it,” he got a hand flapped at him for his troubles, scowling as Tony poured himself a shot of whiskey and downed it just as quick. “You developed a feeling. I wouldn’t know about those: I’m dead inside.”

“Tony, you cried during _The Notebook_.”

“So did you!”

“…And _the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants._ ”

Tony opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again—tried and failed to formulate something to say in return.

“Son,” Bucky murmured softly, walking around the side of the bar to pluck the crystal glass from Tony’s hand and pushed the half-full bottle of liquid amber out of reach, planting a hand on the side of Tony’s neck. “I don’t know about a majority of the pressures you’re under, but I am aware that your ways of dealing with those pressures are going to see you to an early grave if you don’t get some help. You’ve got people who love you a great deal—Rhodey, Peg, Pepper—”

“Mmm, not that last one. She works for me—she’s paid to love me.”

Bucky abruptly pinched Tony’s cheek, lifted his brow in warning. “ _And_ we would hate to see something happen to you. I’m not asking you to let go of the reins and become a priest to live out your later years in fucking Palm Springs in a gated community, but I _am_ begging you, Junior. Please, for once in your life, think before you act.” 

And he had nearly fallen apart in relief when Tony clenched his jaw, nodding once, stiffly.

It was less than five months later that Tony went to Afghanistan.

It was less than five months later that Tony disappeared off the face of the earth.

 

-

 

 _2008_.

*

He had finally had enough of sitting in front of the television, eating up anything that any media outlet could offer him about Tony’s location. All he knew was that there was terrorist activity and he’d not seen Junior in almost two months, had not spoken to him, either. Pepper was ninety-nine percent grace, but her edges were crumbling and Bucky periodically checked in on her, sending her flowers when something launched in the news about how they were no closer to locating Tony than they had been a day, a week, a month previous.

Diana employed a few of her old contacts, but none of them turned up a thing.

Peggy couldn’t pin down any solid leads, either. Nor Fury. Not even the Department of Defense.

For the first time since before Steve died, Bucky went to synagogue. His prayers felt hollow and half-hearted even as he found himself getting swept up in the emotion of a chazan leading the service, voice rising and falling in an old song Bucky had almost forgotten. The Hebrew washed over him, greeting his very soul like an old friend, and he couldn’t help the sharp gasp that ripped through his teeth, thankful he’d tucked himself away towards the back, out of sight of those who might wonder if he’d be joining them the following week, why they’d not seen him sooner.  

He felt lighter for all of ten minutes.

*

Bucky had overslept and missed Tony’s initial pick-up from the airport, but Pepper had texted him the address of where Tony had suddenly planned to make a press conference. His truck had served him well over the years, but with how much he was exerting the gas pedal, he really believed that his old girl might collapse and leave him to complete the trip on foot.

He shouldn’t have doubted her, though, as she crawled right up to an Air and Space facility he’d never once thought to step foot in, much less believed that Tony would willingly speak from.

He nodded at Happy Hogan, who nodded back at him, and he burst in just as the press was starting to shout question after unintelligible question. Tony caught his eye and his mouth fell open a quarter inch and he didn’t have to utter a word for Bucky to dart in and embrace him. Tony’s hand rose to clutch at the back of Bucky’s jacket, his fingers sinking in hard enough to bruise. He tried to be careful of the sling holding Tony’s right arm up, but this being of skin and bone and blood was practically his fucking _offspring_ that had been held in the desert for three months.

“I’m so fucking glad you’re alive,” Bucky whispered, pulling back and holding the back of Tony’s neck in his right hand.Junior didn’t utter a word and that? That more than anything scared Bucky—Tony had always been a man moving at a million miles an hour, his mouth somehow going faster than the rest of him. His silence breathed more than his words did.

“You scared the ever-loving _shit_ out of me,” Bucky told him weakly, focus honing in on the dark circles beneath those huge brown eyes, the tiny lesion at his left brow, the healing cut on his cheek. He was stuck, most strongly, by how much Junior had _aged_.

“Yeah, well,” Tony muttered. “We need to get out of here—Obie will be looking for me and then he’ll bring Pepper and she’ll bring her sad, puppy eyes and I cannot deal with that right now.”

The press was rising to a crescendo, flash bulbs popping at a more frequent rate. “What did you say to them?” Bucky asked, putting a protective arm around Tony’s shoulders as he power-walked them back to the front of the building.

And Tony smiled. It was a hard, lived-in thing that made Bucky’s guts feel like they’d been abruptly lined in acid. “I told them I wanted to stop manufacturing weapons.”

*

If Obadiah Stane hadn’t been deep fried and killed the night of the attack on Stark Industries, Bucky would have done the deed himself.

*

The headlines fell in this order: **_TONY STARK: “STARK INDUSTRIES TO NO LONGER MANUFACTURE WEAPONS”_** , **_WHO IS THE IRON MAN?_** and lastly **_NATION SHOCKED TO HEAR THAT TONY STARK IS IRON MAN_**.

“Really?” Bucky said, stacking up the newspapers with more force than necessary. “ _Really_?” He bet that if he looked in the bathroom mirror he’d see gray hairs actively springing to life, dotting along his jaw, his ears, his temples. He could feel stomach ulcers cropping up with each passing second.

Junior would be the god damn death of him.

(“You’re so intelligent, Tony,” Bucky would say to him some twenty minutes later over the phone only after he’d banged his head on the wall no less than a dozen times and pinched himself to be sure this wasn’t so elaborate dream formulated by his guilty conscience for not being able to turn up to one party that Tony threw over a decade previous. He plucked up a childhood habit of nibbling at his nails as he spoke, biting them down to the skin. “I don’t want you to pull an Icarus and fly too close to the sun.”

“Did you seriously just spout mythology at me to express your concern? _Really_?”

“Tony, one of my oldest friends is a literal Greek demigoddess. Also, excuse me if I care about you enough to worry when you’ve created and started to fly around in a metal suit fighting crime.” All the one night stands and the drugs and the over-indulgence of alcohol were one thing, but this? He was having literal war-flashbacks to Steve’s dumbass jumping over that pit of fire to get them both out of that burning Hydra facility in Azzano, of that shield strapped to his back or his arm like a patriotic target.

It was just then that Bucky realized his brain tended to be drawn to a certain type of people—those who cared too much, who tried to right the wrongs and only piled more guilt for the wrongs that were just too out of their reach to be made right upon their shoulders. He’d seen it in Steve, first, when they were just kids and Steve so determined to have his voice heard at women’s rights rallies, at socialist gatherings, at marches to promote equality between African Americans and whites. Peg had come later, in smaller increments, in the desire to prove herself and climb the ladder within a world crowded by men. And then Tony, who had his eyes opened only after being tortured by terrorists in the middle of the desert and tried to build a machine to protect himself, protect his loved ones, protect his company from anything of the sort every happening again. Tony, somehow, hit hardest, though, because in the back of his mind, Tony would always be that little boy brushed aside by Howard, to be protected at all costs.

Tony had lost so much, no matter how most in his vicinity tried to keep that from happening. Bucky should have seen some sort of stunt like this occurring before. It was a trend, after all. He should be used to such a thing—he’d been good at math in school: probability wasn’t all that hard. Fuck, _he should have known_. Sue him. Now the baby become the boy who became a sad teenager become impossibly sadder man was practically wearing a red and gold neon sign that said, “Hey! Look at me! Over here!”

Tony flapped a hand at him, utterly unconcerned, pretending not to see how frazzled Bucky actually was. “It’s not going to become a _thing_.”

Famous last words, really.)

 

-

 

_2010._

_*_

“Are you ever _not_ going to do shit that takes a decade off my life?” Bucky asked long-sufferingly down the line.

Tony hummed. “Not likely. I mean, you’ve not gotten any older physically since I’ve known you so your argument is kind of invalid and by kind of I mean completely.”

Bucky pinched the bridge of his nose and, not for the first and very far from the last time, wished that he was still capable of getting drunk.

*

He visited Stark Industries on a Tuesday.

Natasha shouldered by him with a wink and he blinked hard, pressing his nails into his palm to be sure he’d not seen a redheaded illusion.

But she wasn’t because just as he hit the button for the floor to drop in to see Tony, she slipped into the elevator with him. She waited for the doors to glide closed before pressing the emergency stop button. “What are you doing here?”

She smiled, hair perfectly curled, a stack of files atop a clipboard held to her chest. “I’m working,” Natasha assured him.

“For who?”

“Fury, Stark—actually, I’m working for Ms. Potts, at the moment—”

He narrowed his eyes. “ _Fury_?”

Her expression never changed. She was wearing too much makeup, too much perfume. There was not a single strand of hair out of place. She stared at him for a very long moment, pressing her lips into a thin line, every ounce of focus aimed on him, on reading the micro-twitches in his face.

“I’m asking as your friend, Natasha,” Bucky said, enunciating each word so she knew full well that he was serious about them. “Please tell me why you’re here.”

Natasha’s shoulders fell, just enough for him to notice. He knew if she did not trust him as much as she did, if he’d not spent so many years being a friend to her and Clint, she’d have evaded him and never stepped foot in the elevator with him. “What do you know of the Avengers Initiative?”

Bucky went stock-still. “No,” he said sharply. “ _No_.”

Her smile was small and there was a small dose of pity in it, nothing to blanch further at. “I see you’re still rubbing elbows with Margaret Carter.”

It was not the time to snap _of course I—she’s been my friend for nearly triple the length of time you’ve been alive._ “He is not mentally fit for the Avengers Initiative, Natasha. You? I could see it—,” she made a face at the implication she was some sort of hero, but he bumped her shoulder lightly with his and it smoothed away. “And hell, I could even see Clint throwing on some spandex and going out to kick ass, but Tony? The Iron Man is literally an advanced coping mechanism he developed after being _held captive in the desert for months on end_.”

She pressed her lips together. “I read his file, James. I know the story—that, and you fawn over him like a proud father often enough that I’m very well aware of the going-on’s in Stark’s personal life. He likes to make himself team leader even if the room is crushed with others who are far more qualified than he is, has demonstrated the qualities of a textbook narcissist—need I continue?” If she cocked her eyebrow any higher, it would float off her face and probably land on Bucky’s upper lip to become half a mustache.

“No,” he sighed. “No you don’t.”

“Are you aware he’s ill?”

Bucky blinked at her. “I’m sorry?”

“Tony. Are you aware that Tony is ill?” she repeated, a bit slower, dragging out the word _ill_ as though he’d not managed to catch it the first go round. “Aren’t you a bit concerned that he’s suddenly trying to hand over his company to Pepper Potts? Those stunts he pulled in Monaco are wild for even his standards. Not to mention before his disastrous birthday party the other night, he’d asked me what I would do if I only had a few days left to live. You’ve known Stark since he was a child. Has he ever been the one to ask deep, philosophical questions like that?”

Each point she made slammed into Bucky’s solar plexus like a punch. “He… He hasn’t’ said anything to me about it.”

“Of course he hasn’t,” Natasha said and she uttered this on a gentle note that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. “He may be a walking, talking bundle of issues, but I can’t deny he’s got good in him. Stark would never want to see you, Potts or Rhodes hurt. I doubt he’s told Carter, either, or his AI system, for that matter.”

Bucky locked his knees to keep from swaying. He suddenly wasn’t sure if dropping in to see Tony was such a good idea. If Peggy knew something, Bucky bet that she’d have said something or, in the very least, dropped a hint.

“I think it has something to do with the arc reactor technology,” Natasha pressed on, either aware of his growing worry or completely ignoring it. He thought that latter was more likely. “Or at least that’s the best guess I can make. You did say he generated this brand of devices in middle of the desert. I doubt that anything he might have gotten his hands on there could exist without some sort of expiration date.”

“Don’t,” Bucky snapped, suddenly unable to contain the word any longer. He lifted his head “Don’t make him out to sound like a machine that is one operating hour away from breaking down and being replaced with a newer model, Nat. Please.”

“Fine,” she said on a gentle note he’d only heard her use on Clint or Lucky or a combination of the two. On any other occasion, he would have been honored to have the same voice aimed at him, but his limbs were cold and he felt his stomach was trying to rearrange itself into intricate knots. “SHIELD has an injection ready to be administered that will temporarily stave off any symptoms that could come from palladium poisoning. Before you ask, the drug should work for a few months.”

“That… That would give him enough time to find a cure,” Bucky said, his shoulders falling from where they’d bunched up around his ears. Natasha nodded her agreement. “Just—do me a favor?

Natasha didn’t utter a word. She just kept watching him.

“Don’t pass him. Tony sticks his neck out enough in the press. He’s not an invincible twenty-something anymore: the older he gets, the more reckless his tendencies become.”

“Woah there, Momma Bear Barnes,” she snarked, complete deadpan even as the right corner of her perfectly painted lips twitched. “If I was the gambling type, I’d wager there’s a nerve that’s been plucked.”

“Plenty of nerves, actually,” Bucky retorted. He could actively feel one of the veins in his forehead starting to throb.

“Easy,” Natasha said, reaching out to squeeze his shoulder. Her hand was small, but packed plenty of strength, especially since she had pressed her fingertips into the round of his metal shoulder and he felt the pressure plain as day. “At the rate he’s going, he won’t make the cut for Avengers. Fury trusts my judgment well enough that if I make the call, he won’t go through with it.”

Bucky knew better than to think that things wouldn’t change. “The world never expected a ninety pound asthmatic that was deaf in one ear and had a heart murmur the size of a quarter to become Captain America,” he pointed out, releasing a heavy breath and nudging the button needed to have the elevator shuddering back to life, continuing their climb up the floors like they’d never paused. “But it happened.”

“But it happened,” she echoed softly. As the doors parted and they stepped out their floor, Natasha laid a hand on his arm, made her eyes big and doe-like. When she spoke, her voice was higher and sweeter than normal and it made the corner of his mouth twitch. “It was a pleasure talking to you, Mr. Barnes.” 

She stalked off, the sound of her heals clicking growing fainter with each step.

*

Tony almost died, except that he didn’t, and Bucky watched all of it on a television set at his sister’s place in Red Hook.

That stomach ulcer? It grew a friend.

 

- 

 

_2011._

_*_

“You know them?” Bucky asked Diana, bumping her elbow with his and nodding at the television screen over the bar in what was becoming their usual dive several blocks from Diana’s apartment building in Manhattan. It was a little place, right along the Hudson where well over half the seating was outside and one could listen to water move and crash while eating a fine meal of seafood.

“No,” she murmured in regard to the blurry cell phone footage of the man clad in silver armor and a red cape, wielding a massive hammer as he battled an amazingly complex robot three times his size. They both held themselves still, faces locked into a mask of neutrality while others around them muttered worriedly about _new_ alien threats.“But I feel at this point, it’s inevitable that we aren’t all brought together, somewhere down the line.”

He sighed.“Point taken.”

Diana smiled empathetically and offered him a piece of salmon for him to try.

*

At three o’clock in the morning, the phone rang at Peggy’s bedside table.

This only happened on three occasions; one—when there was a national emergency and her presence was desperately needed at SHIELD, but Nick had taken over as Director and she wouldn’t be called at all: two—there was a _personal_ emergency that was so dire it couldn’t wait until at least six o’clock in the morning; or three, the one that most concerned her—

“Peg,” Tony breathed softly. “Aunt Peggy, I didn’t mean to wake you up—”

“Clearly you did, love,” she said, the sleep sapping out of her voice completely at the note of numbed shock in his tone. Peggy grunted softly as she pushed herself up, pushing a lock of hair out of her face. “Anthony, what is it? What has you so upset, hmm?”

“I never— _fuck_ ,” he swore, breaking off on a bright, incredulous laugh. “Did you know that after Howard died, I continued his work?” She blinked because of course she knew that—the whole bloody country knew that Anthony had picked up the Stark Industries mantle and carried on the technological advances that Howard, himself, had dreamed of. “Fuck,” Anthony said again. “I swear, I’m not drunk—it’s just— I—”

“Anthony,” Peggy sharpened the name, let it drop from her tongue like she’d stabbed a knife into a table top between them. He made a small noise. “ _Spit it out_.”

“I’ve been pouring funds into finding Steve’s plane ever since the early nineties,” Tony said. _Oh_. He meant _that_ area of Howard’s work. Even after she got off the phone with him, even though her body was still drooping and shaking off the feeling of being deeply asleep, Peggy didn’t think she’d be able to manage going back to bed, not right then. “And after all the work and all the failure, Peg, _we found him_.”

If she were any weaker, Peggy might have dropped the phone.

“Repeat?” she demanded, no louder than a whisper.

Tony’s grin was audible and a little damp. “We found him. My team found Steve—we can finally bring him home.”

Another, far more pressing question came to mind. She covered her mouth with a shaking hand, looked at the framed photograph on her bedside table. It was of her and Barnes in the mid-eighties: he’d taken her to a beautiful botanical garden in St. Louis and they’d asked a passerby to snap a photo of them on a bench covered in Japanese cherry blossoms. It had been a warm day. “Anthony, as overwhelmingly happy that makes me, have you told James? Does he know?”

All sound ceased on the other end of the line. When Anthony fell quiet, especially given he is a man of all sorts of noise, Peggy couldn’t repress a flinch. “The thing is,” he said slowly, as though he were still trying to work through a complex something himself while feeding it to her. “The ice… The ice _preserved_ him, Peg. And the team was able to thaw him.”

Peggy was a professional of reading between the lines at what was not being said aloud. That did not calm her. “You’re still not telling me all the facts,” she said. “What aren’t you saying?”

(She knew. In her heart of hearts, Peggy _knew_.)

“He’s got a heartbeat,” Tony told her and she had no issue in picturing him going limp as the information was finally nudged forth and into her hands instead of the weight of it being braced in his. “They defrosted him like a god damn bag of Green Giant peas and he’s got a heartbeat.”

A thousand miles away and several hours later, on a quiet sound-stage in Manhattan where the walls were white and the lamp was on in the middle of the day and a tinny radio was shouting baseball stats from a game long passed, Steve Rogers stirred.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Should I add another chapter for an epilogue??? Tell me in the comments what you think!


	6. Hercules

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “He’s alive,” Bucky whispered, not quite daring to believe it. “Steve Rogers is alive.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAST~~~~~
> 
> (*it's angsty but then it gets so much better i swear!!! ENJOY!!!)

So.

Steve was alive.

He didn’t know how to feel about that.

The ice had seemed so finite. Down Schmidt’s aircraft to prevent the mass-destruction of the United States and off himself at the same time—bing, bang, boom; two birds, one stone.

And _yet_.

*

Steve was given an apartment located on the Upper East Side, close enough that all it took was a train ride to get to SHIELD headquarters. It was a large space, bigger than his first apartment with Bucky and the one that he’d shared with his mom up until her passing combined. The color palette of everything from the walls to the bed-sheets was a neutral tan; there was a wooden table with four chairs in the kitchen, a stiff couch in the living room, a too soft bed in a sleeping quarters he didn’t use.

An agent had given him a glossy dossier containing general background information and how-to-guides concerning the various technology scattered around his apartment: the toaster, the dishwasher, the oven, the washing machine, the dryer, the sleek laptop, the device he typically forgot at home that fit in the palm of his hand and contained a million encyclopedia’s worth of knowledge—the cell phone. He scanned through it the first day he was actually allowed to be left alone and settle in, but his focus wasn’t kept for very long. There was no smell to the air. Everything was too neat to the point Steve half expected this to be a dollhouse. The windows were made of glass thick enough to muffle any of the city sounds that might otherwise nudge him towards a state of half-ease.

He couldn’t sleep in the bed. Steve had tried, even went about counting sheep, but even he had to admit defeat when he got to four thousand seven-hundred and eighty-five bleating creatures and wasn’t the least bit droopy eyed.Steve had not slept alone since he was eighteen years old and to have half the California king be frigid and undisturbed made his stomach clench, made icicles form around his ribs and the shards of ice extended long enough to pierce the soft bits of his insides.

No matter how hard times became during the Depression, Bucky always made it home to Steve. On the nights that Bucky _did_ have to work late, Steve found that he was restless, tossed and turned and curled on Buck’s side of the bed until the front door cracked open, closed, and after a few minutes spent getting undressed, Bucky would curl up along the line of Steve’s back, hold him close. When Buck had been at Basic, Steve, at least, had his pillow that he could bury his face in—all the linens were fresh and new and with each passing day Bucky’s scent got that much further from Steve’s senses. The war allowed for him and Bucky to share a tent, given Steve was the commanding officer of the Commandos and had the privilege of receiving his own relatively private space. He and Bucky slept side by side, sometimes in the same sleeping bag, never more than a few feet apart.

And now.

(He slept on the floor, never for more than forty-five minutes to an hour at a time. He never failed to wake up with a sharp intake of breath, the feeling of wind whipping around his face, still stinging his cheeks, the scream ripping bleeding and raw from Bucky’s throat as he fell down, down, down echoing in Steve’s ears.)

He tried not to think of Bucky, because Bucky had been dead for two weeks and almost seventy years and there was nothing that Steve could do to change that. Nothing. He’d searched time machines on one of the generic search engines mentioned in the Welcome to the Future packet given to him by SHIELD, coming out with nothing. Just a bunch of science fiction books and movies from the nineteen eighties. Not a damn concrete thing. Not even a prototype—no flying cars, either. Steve had checked.

But he couldn’t _not_ think about the man who had single-handedly implanted himself into the center of Steve’s heart, mind, body, and soul. It was impossible. It’s like he went into the city and saw a man wearing a leather jacket and he thought, _Buck would look great in something like that_ and he’d dropped into a thrift store and saw an entire wall of dime novels for fifty-cents each and was immediately hit with _Buck read that whole series in the winter of forty-one,_ and he came home with the entire set in tow. He’d see a pair of gray eyes in the face of a man or a woman in passing, think _almost, but not quite_. A dapper suit, a World War II documentary, a synagogue, a diner, fucking roses that just so happened to be the same color of Bucky’s mouth.

Then there was the fact that after you grow so used to always sharing a space with someone, suddenly having so much empty room is… it’s god damn unbearable is what it is. There’s no one singing Frank Sinatra in the shower, no one leaving pomade bottles all over the apartment, no one to kick off their dirty boots in the middle of the floor for Steve to trip on, no one to sidle up to Steve in the kitchen from behind and kiss the back of his neck. No one at all.

(Steve did not think he’d ever have to live in a time where Bucky Barnes wasn’t alive and well. There was an underlying reason for him putting that plane down. He knew it, Peggy had known it, God, himself, who Steve didn’t speak to regularly anymore, had his number, too.)

The silence, made clearer by his enhanced senses, was awful. His Ma had never been loud, but she had hummed at the stove and had both the sharpest and the sweetest voice he’d ever heard in all his life, and living with her had been easy. Bucky couldn’t stay fucking quiet to save his life, always chewing his nails, dropping the pin on a record, scuffing his feet, clanging silverware together, anything to get Steve’s attention. The habit, Buck’s habit of being so noisy, had been kicked by the war, as if any of them breathed too loudly in enemy territory, they’d get shot to kingdom come. Still, though, the days spent with the Howling Commandos hadn’t been endured in absolute silence—Gabe sang songs his grandparents taught him as a boy, Monty loved to sharpen his knives, Jim was a professional at tuning the radio, cursing a blue streak if the signal was too weak to get anything good, Dum-Dum was always laughing and sharing anecdotes, huge belly laughs that were infectious and warm. Frenchy had a love for explosions—enough said.

Long story short, Steve’s pride might have always tried to claim he didn’t need anyone to get by, but Steve, himself, was a dirty fucking liar. He’d needed his mother the way the blind would a guide, needed the Commandos to show that in a shit world, there was camaraderie and bravery and _good_.

He needed Bucky for pretty much everything else.

(Another seventy years could pass, double that, triple it, keep the numbers rising until time itself falls apart like damp newspaper and Steve Rogers would always need Bucky Barnes, always love him. He was the brightest spot in Steve’s life, the very axis on which Steve spun. That was not something that could be broken by time.)

*

Steve had gone out into the world he no longer felt apart of; he’d joined a twenty-four hour boxing ring and even invested in a series of his own punching bags so he’d not be beating the gym out of house and home. He’d made a relative routine of it, even wrapped his knuckles so no one would give him odd looks for having pulpy, black and blue fists.

And then Nick Fury brought him the file about the stolen Tesseract.

*

Bucky just stepped out of Diana’s apartment building, belly full of Chinese food he’d picked up on his way over, when he received two texts from Natasha—

One: _Clint has been compromised, will be out of reach for a few days._

Two: _Check on Lucky, please. I’ll owe you._

He spent the day walking Lucky around Bed Stuy, letting him run around to his heart’s content at Herbert Von King’s dog park, smiling when Lucky’s yellow tail started to beat out its own breeze whenever another dog got close enough for him to smell. Bucky stopped by Clint’s favorite pizza place to grab a large pepperoni pie: he ate half and gave a quarter to Lucky, saving the rest for leftovers.

He sent Nat a photo of her and Clint’s yellow dog, of Lucky conked out on the rug in front of the television and did not get a reply.

*

Tony Stark was… something else. He looked more like Howard than _Howard_ looked like Howard and it was a bit of a head-rush, to see him building technology that the elder Stark could have only dreamed of. He’s loud and he’s got to be the center of attention and yeah, this is something that Steve knows. They had not spoken very much besides those few words while taking in Loki—an actual bona fide _god,_ granted a Norse god, but a divine being nonetheless— and in the clearing after Stark’s brawl with Thor. From what Steve gathered, Tony was an intelligence power-house who’d turned his father’s company into a massive empire, all the while becoming the Iron Man.

(He can see something in Stark’s eyes, something like a phantom lurking just below the surface, and he’s curious about what might be haunting the man, but does not ask. Steve has his own ghosts—he knows better than to rattle the chains of someone else’s.)

Steve’d just walked out of the canteen, the pair of ham sandwiches he’d consumed sitting heavy in his gut, when he caught the sound of brisk footsteps approaching.

Stark swanned right up to him,and it’s the first time Steve’s seen him outside the lab for a few hours, and his eyes are a bit big in his face, hair wild and everywhere all the while maintaining a semblance of neatness. For a moment, Steve half-expected Stark might try to ask for his autograph, confess he had a secret stash of original Captain America comic books. “So,” he said, a bit stilted, like this wasn’t the type of thing he typically did. “Are you, um, okay? I’m asking for an, ah, friend?”

Steve couldn’t help but _look_ at him, wonder who this _friend_ was. “I’m amazing,” he deadpanned. _The first thing SHIELD gave me after a change of clothes and a briefing on how I was alive was a black binder filled with pictures of all my family and friends who are dead or dying. Everyone is trying to ease me into this new, shining world without allowing me time to grieve for the time I’ve been made to leave behind.My apartment has been picked and furnished for me without taking into account where I’d like to live, what I want in my space, if anything at all. People talk to me slow like I don’t understand even though I_ do _understand, I just haven’t been taught._ “I could not literally be better right now if you paid me.”

The hand in which Stark held his phone twitched. “I’d have never guessed you would have ranked in at Captain Sassy before Captain America,” Stark confessed and though that same edge of him being uncomfortable remained, as though he was an utter stranger at offering comfort to people, this was a duty he had to take up for a reason unknown to Steve.

“Yeah,” Steve said. “Not many would.”

“You knew my Dad,” Stark said, a statement of fact, not an inquiry, shifting from topics so fast Steve’s head nearly spun. “He never shut up about you, how you were his crowning, scientific achievement. He looked for you until the day he died, but never could locate your plane.” With each word that came out of Stark’s mouth, Steve’s stomach clenched a little more and the pace of which Stark spoke quickened. “But he never said _Steve Rogers_. It was always Cap this, Cap that, Cap, Cap, Cap.”

Stark, very pointedly, rolled his eyes. His jaw jerked a few degrees to the right, throat working.

“My childhood was shit, you can imagine,” he continued, flippant. “But I was very lucky to have been surrounded by people who knew the man behind the shield. And I actually love to toot my own horn, so toot, toot, motherfucker—,” the grin Steve got was a bit manic and he could have been back in nineteen forty-two, watching Howard on stage at the World’s Fair, explaining the intricacies of his flying car. “I _see_ you. If I was a hugger, I’d hug you until you were totally red, white and blue, but I’m not a hugger. So,” and with that, Stark shot him a shoddy salute.“So. If you, uh, need to, um, get emotional or whatever, come, ngh.” He closed his eyes, squeezing his phone in his hand. “Come find me? There, okay. _Okay_ , yeah. Gotta grab the Big Guy some snacks. When he’s hungry, he gets cranky which leads to anger which leads to, well, you know how it is.”

As he power-walked away, Steve saw him jab a couple of keys on his phone in rapid succession then bring the device to his ear: as he ducked around the corner, Steve heard him say sharply: “Pep, honey, stop what you’re doing right this second because it’s going down for _real_.”

Steve had no idea what to make of that.

(Tony would say to Romanoff twenty minutes later, only because he now identifies her as someone else who cares about Bucky: “Did you also get the threat that if we say a word about Cap being not dead to a certain almost one-hundred going on twenty-nine year old with the great hair we’ll never see the light of day again? Because I had six agents literally storm my building. In the middle of the night. I was _naked_ , Romanoff.”

“As though you’ve never been caught with your pants down before, Stark.Fury debriefed me,” she said, and there is something in her face that Tony has never seen before. He can’t name it—he can only identify that it exists and that it bothers him for existing. “He said he’ll tell Barnes in time, but I don’t like this. Rogers is…”

“Ambling around like the saddest god damn golden retriever _ever_? Kicked, starved, left out in the rain, the whole bit?”

She breathed out sharply through her nose. “Tired,” Romanoff corrected. If Tony wasn’t mistaken, he’d say she looked _weary_. The moment passed, though, as her eyebrow cocked high and she pursed her lips. “Though I’m genuinely shocked, Stark. You’ve never had a problem disregarding authority and this time, if you did, it would be for the sake of the man who helped bring you up.”

Tony, pointedly, did not think of Bucky, didn’t think about how he was probably alone doing whatever it is people who think their sweethearts died almost three-quarters of a century ago did. If he allowed himself to do that, he’d pick up his phone and he’d word barf _everywhere._ “Of course I want to tell him,” he grit out. “But in case it’s escaped your notice, we’re on a flying fortress with an actual _god_ who wants us all to kill each other so he can take out the rest of the world as its sociopathic overlord. I really don’t want Rogers trying to go AWOL to get to Bucky or for old man Barnes to try and hot wire my private jet so he can reach us. Surprisingly enough, I _do_ value my sanity and safety of everyone on board.”

Romanoff blinked at him. “ _Huh_.”)

*

Steve wished that Banner wasn’t as heavily involved in the mathematical and scientific research as he was: Banner was quiet and didn’t press or ask any invasive questions. Banner, like Steve, just wanted to be left alone. But going into the lab meant exposing himself to Banner and Stark, and Stark’s personality was enough to flood the entire helicarrier thrice over.

He spent a bit of time sitting in the main wing of the helicarrier, doodling idly on the backs of the mission report left behind when Stark and Banner took off to the lab.

Romanoff, who was as beautiful as she was deadly, watched him when she believed him to be otherwise occupied. He watched her, too, saw how she made rounds to the row of computers running a constant facial image recognition scan on her partner, Barton, how she’d get stiffer each time she came away from them with no new news.

(She was a woman of secrets, but he knew that look. He knew how someone acts when they are so worried about another that their lungs are burning with the desire to scream and every one of their muscles was thrumming with the need to do anything other than just sitting around and twiddling their thumbs. Barton was special to her. Maybe even _special_ to her.)

“It’s got to be a jarring experience,” Romanoff said. “Gods and monsters and magic.”

He allowed a tip of his head in consideration. “I once saw the Red Skull pull off his own face. I stepped into a box ninety pounds with a laundry list of disabilities the length of my arm and I walked out looking like this. I saw guns that could rip solid, strong men to atoms with one blast.” Steve gave her a tiny smile, pen stilling when he realized he’d sketched out half of Bucky’s profile. He swallowed, clenching his fist hard enough the pen creaked. “I’ve seen worse, ma’am.”

She smiled and though she seemed to wear personalities like jackets, shrugging them on and off as she so pleased, Steve believed the upward quirk of her lips to be genuine. Romanoff had not missed the subject of his drawing. “I’m… sorry you’ve been thrown back into this, especially so soon.”

“I wasn’t doing anything else,” he said, shrugging.

“You could have been,” she reasoned quietly and just like Stark, he felt as though he was missing a piece of the conversation though he’d heard every word uttered quite clearly.

Steve flicked up his brow, pushing the uncertainty down deep into the trench of other things he tried not to poke with a ten foot pole. “I really couldn’t have been. I’m not stupid—I know SHIELD’s constantly got someone tailing me. No matter where I go, there’s a man behind a newspaper, a woman who happened to duck in the same dozen stores I have.” _I just want to grieve in peace,_ he nearly said, but that didn’t seem like the sort of line he should spout to Natasha Romanoff with surveillance footage of Loki constantly playing on a screen between them.

“Well,” and there was a different smile on her face, now, a little harder, a bit bloody around the edges. With a pang, he thought of Peggy and her perpetually red-painted mouth: she was alive, she was the only one of them that was alive and he shouldn’t be as surprised as he was, not really. “Once we’ve got this all sorted—and I have no doubt with all the brain and muscle power we’ve gathered on board, we will— I can think of a few places you might like to see.” When he cocked an eyebrow, sitting a little straighter in his chair, Romanoff rolled her eyes. “A… friend of mine, he really likes to tour memorials and national parks. He’s been thinking about going to see the Grand Canyon again—might like someone to go with?”

Grand Canyon. A promise made in the confines of a drafty canvas tent fifty miles into Nazi territory in forty-three. A promise that would never be kept. Steve swallowed, unable to look at anywhere but the table and his clenched fists. “Maybe another time.”

Romanoff sat back in her chair. She didn’t press. He liked her for that.

*

She opened her mouth to say something, just as Steve began to wonder to himself if she and Stark shared the same mutual _friend,_ when it all went to shit.

He wasn’t surprised about that, either. In Steve’s line of work, it was bound to happen sooner or later.

*                                                                                                                                                                 

Upon Tony’s advisory to, quote through text message: “ _GET! THE! FUCK! OUT! OF! NEW! YORK!!!!!!!!!!!”_ Bucky was in New Hampshire when the sky above Manhattan opened up and spat out thousands upon thousands of alien warriors. It’s something out of that film _Independence Day,_ with the visible portal to some other end of the galaxy serving as an ugly gash through the clouds and the mid-afternoon sunshine.

He’s got Lucky on a leash, a couple of squeaky toys shoved into the driver’s side door, and a bag of dog food stored in the bed of his truck. The woman who owned the hole in the wall taco place had recognized him and the only question she asked concerned whether or not Lucky was house-trained. Lucky harrumphed at her, flicking his one eye to Bucky in a _can you believe this_? sort of way that made Bucky crack a smile. At his confirmation, she nodded at him and asked what he’d like for lunch.

Bucky hadn’t even had time to open his mouth because someone reached over the bar and grabbed the remote, jabbing the volume button until there was the frantic voice of a reporter filtering through the entirety of the eatery. He stared at the television, ripping up from the booth he’d been situated at the far corner to be out of the sight-lines of other patrons, Lucky following closely along at his heels. That Banner guy has turned into his chaos inducing alter-ego and launching from building to building ripping apart the flying vehicles the aliens straddled; through a grainy bit of footage, he sees Natasha’s red, red hair, Clint’s arrows landing home each time he sheathed and fired. Thor summoned a pack of lightning to his hammer and Bucky watched as the electric tendrils spread like fingers through the chests of half a dozen aliens.

He called Tony, his eyes never straying from the screen.  

“Hey, Buckmiester Miesterbuckster,” Tony said lightly and in the background, Bucky had no problem hearing the sharp sound of Tony’s gauntlets firing repulsor beams as he ripped his way through a heavy throng of Chitari. “Turn off the television—that shit’ll rot your brain.”

“Tony, what the— _behind you!”_

Just as he yelped out the warning, on the screen, Iron Man whipped around and punched his hand right through the face of one of the aliens. “Are you out of the city? What about your sister? Her kids?”

“Yeah, yeah, Junior, they got out just fine—they’re staying with one of John’s relatives in Maine. What the hell is happening?”

“You’re near a TV, right?” There was a grunt as a blast fired from one of the alien guns right at Tony’s head and the helmet sent off a small rain of sparks. He seemed to be otherwise alright, shooting another pulse of power from his palm directly into the alien’s face. “ _X Files_ lied—these guys aren’t little green men. They’re great—,” punch, “—big—,” there goes a head, “—gray—,” and an arm of another, “— _assholes_!”

“How did this even happen? I thought the Avengers Initiative—”

The camera jumped, though, and Bucky slammed his flesh hand down hard on the maple counter of the bar. Lucky whined, pressing up against his legs. Unconsciously, he reached down and scratched behind his floppy ears. “Tony—!”

A figure clad in red, white and blue ran onto the scene, chucking a shield that collided perfectly with the armor of an alien, bouncing right back to the sprinting man to be thrown again at the same, precise angle. Bucky would know that costume anywhere, even if it was a lot brighter and more of a target than the uniform of the past had been.

“Anthony Edward Stark,” Bucky said lowly. “Who is the god damn schmuck prancing around in a shitty Captain America onesie?”

Though the connection was breaking up, Bucky heard Tony’s clear curse. “Yeah, uh, about that—”

The line went dead.

Thirty seconds later Tony was flying a nuke into the portal to nowhere, vanishing.

Bucky picked Lucky up bridal style and legged it for the parking lot.

*

Traffic into New York would probably be a lot less hectic than anything _out_ of the city.  Bucky was counting on that. He only made two stops: one for Lucky to eat a bowl of food and then walk around the small rest area do to his business and another to for gas. Otherwise, he spent about six hours plowing down the interstate going thirty-five over the suggested speed limit

He knew one thing for certain, just one—Bucky was going to have _words_ with Nicolas J. Fury.

*

They stopped for shawarma, once Loki had been apprehended and the portal was closed and the wild chaos of the battle faded away into the general chaos of the following clean-up. It was Tony’s idea—no one wanted to deny him this, especially since he’d nearly gotten himself killed all of an hour ago. The other man’s phone kept pinging, a relentless noise emanating from his helmet.

“Just tell him I’m _fine_ , J,” Stark said, toneless. Steve had seen the look on the faces of soldier’s before and though people of his time had called it shell-shock, he recalled the name that SHIELD used to be Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or at least the beginnings of it. “Tell him I’m fine.”

“Sir, I believe it would be best if you actually talk to—”

“ _Jarvis_.”

Barton fished his phone from one of many pockets in his uniform and his thumb jumped quickly across the screen, tapping out a string of letters then shooting up to send the message. “Done. Now put that thing on do not disturb mode, yeah?”

Banner and Thor just kept poking at their food, Banner timidly, as though this was his last meal and he was waiting for a bullet to strike him down, Thor on a ravenous auto-pilot mode. Steve wondered if he was the only one who’d caught the brief conversation or if he’d imagined it all together. The pinging of Stark’s phone stopped, though, immediately afterward, so Steve thought his second line of reasoning was the weaker one.   

He ended up falling asleep leaning into his palm, his shield tipped against his calves. Just before he was hauled under by the inviting hands of unconsciousness, he saw Romanoff and Barton exchanging silent words with just their eyes. Romanoff kicked up her leg on Barton’s chair, Barton pressing his boot against Romanoff’s ankle.

Steve was glad for them. They’d made it out safe. They'd get to go home together—and he could see now, though he knew that Romanoff probably didn't wish for him to, that they were, indeed, together. 

Must be nice.

*

The streets around the SHIELD building in Manhattan were a wreck; there were huge pieces of infrastructure and cement chunks, hoods and doors from vehicles ripped off and dropped like they were children’s playthings set to be picked up later. In some spaces, the roads were so wrecked, one could see the exposed metal of pipes. Someone had yet to cut off a spewing fire hydrant. It was like walking a post-apocalyptic wasteland where there were only a handful of people out and about and none of them made eye contact or even so much as looked Bucky’s way as he parallel parked in the nearest undamaged slice of asphalt.  

Bucky cracked the window of his truck, poured Lucky a bowl of water and laid out a handful of  the kibble he liked in the cab of his vehicle, shutting the door far too hard. He didn’t care, though: he’d had roughly four hundred miles to sit in silence and stew in anger, in grief. This was what it felt like to be a bomb, knowing your fuse is lit and that you’re ready to be unleashed in a moment of fire and destruction—and Bucky had every intention of ripping Fury a new asshole with all the things he needed to say.

He had to walk two blocks and that gave him about seven and a half minutes to both work off what sharp, toxic energy had been simmering in his body and mind for the last handful of hours and gathering more aggression with each step. One thing he’d realized, and it had been partially his fault he was on the outside of the VIP velvet rope, but when Bucky had gone and told Fury that he wanted to have no part in SHIELD, he was inadvertently shutting himself off from crucial information. Bucky had not seen it at the time, hadn’t thought to consider if it did just a bit of consultant work _maybe_ he’d be let into the loop, could manage to play damage control in the event something occurred and he didn’t very much like the outcome.

By saying no to Fury, he had allowed _this_ to happen. And at that point, Bucky didn’t even know what _this_ was. Who knew what kind of technology SHIELD had. The imposter was probably a clone SHIELD had created by pulling microfilaments or skin cells from a piece of paper the side of Steve’s hand made brief contact with in forty-four to create a new, shining specimen. Hell, it could just be a man who had no shame in being a bastardized replacement for a man who died serving his country, who died to save the free world from white supremacists.

Bucky shoved into the atrium, all glass and steel and steep ceilings, with a whole new layer of pissed draped over his shoulders. His boots, well-worn as they were, enabled him to cut mutely over the smooth linoleum. The whole place was a hive of activity, packs of agents moving to and from and here to there, hurrying along in a way Bucky associated with robots.

Still, that anxiousness to be somewhere didn’t stop the various folk he passed to fall silent in his wake.  None of them came forward to stop him, to tell him that he couldn’t get access to the elevators, that he couldn’t go to Fury’s corner office looking a dozen breaths away from committing murder. He may not be out in the field anymore, but Bucky was fully aware that he was respected for his decision to put down his guns and knives to use a more diplomatic approach at getting his views across.

He made it up to the top floor in under a minute. In a minute twelve seconds, Bucky was throwing open the doors to Nick Fury’s office and sweeping across the space to stand in-front of the man at the very tip-top of Bucky’s shit list, the second being imposter who’d donned Steve’s uniform.

“Fury, what the fuck do you think you’re playing at, huh?” Bucky snarled, close enough that, if he wasn’t purposely controlling the release of air that passed through his lips, Bucky could feel the other man’s breath fan across his face. “How dare you have the audacity to shove a shameless asshole into Steve’s uniform—and it’s not even a good costume! Are you trying to get the stupid son of a bitch killed? He looks more like a target—!”

“Sergeant,” Nick said, his eyebrows gradually rising higher and higher. There was nothing in his voice that suggested he was bothered. “Maybe if you shut the fuck up for a second, you could let me explain a few things.”

Bucky blinked, shaking himself to clear the abrupt cloud of static that had settled across his mind. “Explain _what_? That you—” Fury raised his hand and, despite every instinct that screamed _be a stubborn asshole, don’t sit down and take this horseshit_ , Bucky let his jaw clip shut.

“Now,” the other man said, settling back into his chair. Though he was a fellow of micro-expressions, Bucky had no problem seeing how satisfied Fury was that Bucky had complied with his demand. “You’re going to listen and you’re going to take this like an adult, alright? You’re closer to one hundred than you are to ninety: if you can’t act your age, I’ll leave you in the dark until the sun itself dies out, understand?”

No, Bucky most certainly did not understand. Apparently, he’d missed some huge chunk of information, was being made unaware of some occurrence. Being kept out of the loop had never done anyone any good and he yanked out the single uncomfortable-looking chair on the opposing side of Fury’s desk and dropped into it.

“I’m listening.” The unspoken _you big bag of dicks_ was easily implied from the set to Bucky’s jaw, this ice in his eyes and voice.

“Twenty days ago,” Fury began lightly, his dark eye never leaving Bucky’s face. “A team deployed by Stark Industries, one that has been active for the last two years, located a large object in the Arctic. Nineteen days ago, they managed to clear the ice and snow from atop it and discovered it to be a piece of Hydra technology, matching all files as the aircraft called Valkyrie. Eighteen days ago, the same team discovered Captain Roger’s body frozen inside.”

Bucky was glad he’d sat down. If he hadn’t sat down, his legs would have given out and he’d be a mess on the ground. He didn’t want to give Fury that satisfaction. They’d found Steve—a team that _Tony_ had sent out for _Steve_. At long last, Steve could properly come home. A weight Bucky hadn’t even realized existed shuddered and dispersed from existence, falling from his mind in the manner of snow shaken from tree branches. For so many years, Bucky had given up hope that any sort of wreckage would be found, had believed he’d be doomed to forever visit an empty grave.

And now. It took a great deal of control to keep from reaching into his wallet for the photo he kept of Steve there so he could fiddle with a familiar something. He settled for clenching his hands into fists.

He hadn’t even noticed Fury had kept speaking until further sound flooded his ears, as though some greater being had abruptly turned up the volume. “—used lasers to extract the body from the ice and when they did, Barnes, they found that Rogers had a heartbeat. It was faint, but it was there.”

Bucky had allowed his head to dip forward only to snap to attention at _heartbeat._ His hair was a bit lank and tangled from where he’d not taken care to brush it and it fell across his forehead in dark lines. He could feel his own pulse ratchet up, his throat tighten, his stomach sharply rise then drop.

“It was the serum,” Fury told him. “Erskine’s serum managed to preserve his cells all these years—he’s not aged, he’s not harmed.”

“He’s alive,” Bucky whispered, not quite daring to believe it. “Steve Rogers is alive.”  

“Yes.”

For a moment, Bucky was on that Themysciran beach, reliving Diana telling him that Steve was dead, only he was living it in bittersweet reverse. The pain was being sharply sapped away, venom from a wound instead of poison injected directly into his bloodstream. He was walking out of the water in reverse. The confession that the one person Bucky cherished above all others having been lost to the sea pulled from his ears and forgotten, disappearing back into Diana's mind, disappearing from her thoughts all-together. The pain was of it was replaced with a shining, undiminished light that Steve was fine, that he was whole and unharmed.

His voice was small, but working nonetheless. “Why didn’t you let me see him, huh?” Bucky grit out, curling his metal hand into a fist so tight, he heard the circuitry groan and mutter their protests. Fury did not bat an eyelash. He could not help but wonder if the man was capable of emotion, any emotion at all. He half expected to reach forward and see a cyborg’s eye beneath that black patch, for Fury to take hold of the skin beneath his jaw and pull back a mask to reveal shining circuitry beneath the human façade. Less likely things had happened. 

“We believed it would be a smoother transition if he had no distractions and could focus on adjusting to this new age.”

“That is pure bullshit,” he snapped, voice going low and tight with the sharpness he’d not used since he’d had to break up fights down at the docks on the daily in forty-one. “You know what he means to me. And if you don’t, do a fucking Google search—it’s not exactly underground knowledge. Even I know it’s written on my forehead more often than not.  Who better than me to help him adjust—someone who’s lived back in the forties through the turn of the century, who knows Steve, who cares about him—” Bucky sat up a straighter as he was struck dumb with a realization. His voice was as cold as the ravine that had nearly claimed his life. “ _Who cares about him enough not to send him to fight alien invaders less than two weeks after he’s been taken out of a sixty-seven year deep freeze._ ”  

“He was more than willing to assist in the battle,” Fury claimed, unperturbed.

Bucky launched to his feet so sharply the chair flew back and overturned. He slammed his metal hand down on Fury’s desk hard enough that there was a crater in the shape of his fist left behind. “You manipulated him,” he snarled. “A man who gave his life for this country, so you could be born and you moved him around like a piece in a chess game. You don’t care about him—how long were you going to wait to tell him about me, huh? Six months? A year? Let another couple of situations like these happen and then you’ll dangle me out in-front of him like a steak to a starving dog? Is that it, Fury? Is that what you fucking planned to do?”

Fury didn’t utter a word. He sat back to better _look_ at Bucky. “When I believed him to be of fit state of mind, I was going to tell him, Barnes.”

“My existence isn’t secret,” Bucky snapped. “If he’s a part of your little rag-tag group of superheroes, then he’ll no doubt come in contact with Romanoff, Barton and Tony, all of which are perfectly aware of our relationship.”

“I ordered them not to say anything to you,” Fury countered. “Barton and Romanoff didn’t like it, but they are used to doing things that they don’t particularly care to do. Stark, on the other hand—”

What little resolve of Bucky’s shattered. “Oh _hell_ no,” he snarled. “You don’t get to treat Junior like one of your puppets. It’s bad enough you jerk everyone else around here on a tight leash, but you don’t get to restrain him, too.”

“All evidence of your and Roger’s dynamic suggests that if he’d have known you were alive, he’d have thrown himself thirty thousand feet off the helicarrier to get to you, damn if the rest of the world needed him first. I was thinking of the greater good, Barnes. Maybe you don’t remember what it was like to truly be a sergeant—”

A bark of laughter broke through the tight seam of Bucky’s mouth. “I remember all of it,” he said. “I remember the blood and the loss and the fear that if I gave the wrong order, all my men and I would die because of my carelessness. I even know that you probably were planning on waxing poetic about how your life is so terrible because you’ve got to wake up and do that every single day of your life, but I don’t care and I don’t want to hear it.” Bucky pulled in a slow, steadying breath through his teeth, his eyes dipping closed just so he didn’t have to look at Fury or anything in his minimalist office any longer. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, _sir_ , if I have to share air with you for another second, I’m going to throw myself off the roof.”

It may have been childish, but he kicked the chair he’d occupied in passing so it landed in five different places in over a dozen shattered pieces. His face was flushed a furious red, hair jumping with the way he stamped his feet. Bucky was already yanking out his cell phone before the elevator doors had shut. No matter how hard he tried, Bucky could not stop the harsh shaking of his appendages as he flicked through his short list of contacts, had to lean against the wall of the elevator as though he wasn’t falling apart. Jabbing the call button, Bucky covered the upper half of his face with his left hand. The cool metal did little to dull the ice-pick throbbing he felt trying to stab its way through both his eyes.

Everything was too bright. No one had told him that Steve was alive and, presumably, that Bucky, also, was alive given he knew damn well that Steve would be hiring a skywriter to send a message if he became desperate enough. The world was too full of color for the first time that Bucky could recall and it was too, too bright. He knew now why that was and swallowed back a mouthful of bile for having not realized the cause of such an injection of pigment into _everything_ sooner.

He heard the line connect. There was no pause for pleasantries. “Okay,” Tony said slowly, too high to be considered casual, “don’t be angry. That’s Banner’s job.”

“Where is he?” Bucky demanded.

He could just see Junior blink, probably having been waiting by the phone for when such a call was put through. “Who? Waldo? Bucky, my guy, that’s a question that’s been asked for a really long time—Jarvis? How long has—”

“God damn it,” he sighed, trying not to snap and partially failing. Bucky knew well how Tony hated, even still, when people raised their voices at him. “Junior, you were literally just flying around saving New York with him _this morning_. I…I need to see Steve. _Please_.”

Tony was quiet for over ten seconds. “I wanted to tell you. I wanted to text you and say quick, I’m sending a helicopter to pick you up, get here right this second, but so much was going on. I mean, you saw the news and I think you should be proud, Buckster, I played relatively nicely and shared my toys and made friends—”

“I know," Bucky assured him, clenching his jaw. "Literally any other time, I would pat you on the back and genuinely congratulate you. You’re evading the question, Tony. Come on. Where the hell is he?” 

“I think the most important thing here has yet to be addressed. What hand are you holding your phone in?” Bucky was clenching the device so hard with his metal limb, he could hear the speakers actively creak. “That’s what I thought. Switch it up. Come on.” He did as was demanded of him. “Alright, good. “Okay. Look at us, using our words like a couple of grownups.”

“ _Tony_.”

“How much do you know?”

“I’m just leaving the SHIELD building in Manhattan—I just had quite the enlightening conversation with Fury.”

Tony made a soft, _ah_ noise in response. If his voice got any higher, he'd be passing the stratosphere. “We’re all at the Tower, now, but we’re going to be moving to Central Park to have Thor deliver Loki back to their home realm or whatever. Cap will be with us.”

Bucky only opened his eyes when he heard the elevator ding as the doors opened. Immediately, caution wept into the small space like a physical odor when he stepped out and found himself being stared at by nearly person on site. This time, though he’d known that he’d attracted attention on the way in, he glared at anyone who was close enough to fall into his direct line of sight.

“I’m heading over now.”

“No!” Tony yelped. 

Bucky shoved out into the late afternoon light— _too bright, too bright, too bright—_ and moved as quickly as he could back to his truck. “Why _not_.” It did not fall in the category of a question. He was shaking. He'd not ever stopped shaking. 

“Don’t you want a dramatic moment? A huge reunion with all the bells and whistles?”

“I just want him, Tony,” Bucky said, running a hand through his hair to smooth it back against the wind. He could see his truck, could see Lucky peering back at him through the windshield, tongue lolling and tail thumping against the passenger window. “I just want to see him and for him to see me. All the extra trimmings are unnecessary.”

Tony fell uncharacteristically silent. If Bucky really perked an ear, he could hear voices in the background. He wondered if any of them were Steve. “I’ll rip apart this entire city to find him, Junior,” Bucky swore when the time frame for a response passed and kept on passing. “You know I will.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt you,” Tony said. “That’s the sad part.”

When he made it back to his vehicle, Bucky practically collapsed into the cab, shouldering his phone after he dropped his keys twice. Even his mechanical hand was spasming. He felt his throat constrict, his cheeks flood with a hot, hot dose of blood. Lucky immediately pressed into his space, licking worriedly at his cheek. Bucky pressed his forehead to the steering wheel, burying a hand in Lucky’s fur. His canine companion let out a soft whine, bumping Bucky’s cheek with his snout and leaving a cool, damp spot behind. He was grounded by the steady _puff-puff_ of warm dog breath against the side of his face. “H-how does he look?”

“Big, blond and buff? Jacked up in the muscle department more than any photograph would show—”

Bucky let out a painful sound, curling his free arm around his middle as thought that would be enough to hold his insides together. (It wasn't.) “Please don’t bullshit me, Tony.”

There was a sigh, low and drawn. Bucky, through the haze of shock that was draped over his ears, detected a note of pain. “Romanoff doesn’t think he’s sleeping. He was temperamental with nearly everyone, even though he looked really apologetic immediately afterward. I asked if he was doing okay, because I know if you'd have been there,  _you_ would have asked him if he was doing okay and he just kind of? Gave me a look like I was the biggest idiot he'd ever seen? And he fought _Nazis_ for a living." 

“He sounds just like he did when his Ma passed,” Bucky whispered, the same vice that had temporarily loosened from around his neck was pulled back into place with double the force. His hurt had claws and it was not afraid to show them. "Is he eating at all? Tony, he gets lost in his head sometimes and if he goes deep enough—"

"You said you're in the city, right?" Tony interrupted and though Bucky could only faintly hear him over the boom of his pulse growing louder in his ears, Bucky let out an _mmm_ of confirmation. "Look, Pepper is going to be landing at JFK tomorrow morning. By then, Loki will be off-planet and the clean-up will begin. I was thinking of throwing a gala tomorrow night. A way to raise money for the damages done to the city. Invite the rich and douchey to wine and dine on my dime for a few hours. It'll be black tie. I think I can guilt the team into coming." 

Bucky's breath shuddered as he released it. "The whole team?" he muttered into the steering wheel, nose pressed just above the horn. Lucky was practically glued to his side.  

"Every last one of them. Even Rhodey, though he only came in  _after_ the real fight was over," Tony said, flippant. Bucky only just kept from pinching the bridge of his nose. “Go crash at Diana's for tonight, get some beauty rest." Bucky wouldn't sleep. Tony knew that. "Eight o’clock at the Tower tomorrow night. Look sharp—you’ve got a date, old man.”

*

The sun was edging closer to the west than the east, almost five and still bright, as though time had temporarily paused and after a great deal of gore, was allowing excess light in. Steve and the rest of the Avengers had parted long enough to return to their respective places of dwelling, assembling once they had showered, changed clothes and returned a little more level-headed. The movement of Loki and the Tessaract back to Thor's home planet went smoothly and even allowed for a few beats of smiles and handshakes. Just as he made to leave, though, walking back to his bike and making to climb on, he heard a high noise and a sharp  _fuck!_ from behind him. 

Steve turned to see Tony striding briskly up to him, hands tucked into the side pockets of his slacks. "Now just where do you think you're going, Rogers?" 

He blinked a little longer than was natural to hide a brisk roll of his eyes. "Anywhere but here, Stark." 

Tony cocked an eyebrow up above the pink lenses of his glasses, rucking a hand through his hair. "Seriously? We just saved the world together and you're bolting? Come on, I bet you've not even heard about the Dodgers, yet!" 

Steve stilled. "What about the Dodgers?" he asked slowly. 

And Tony waved him away. "Unimportant for now," the dark haired man retorted with the type of tone that suggested he'd dropped a bit of information with a story attached to it and not necessarily a positive one. Tony's shoulders drooped slightly. Not for the first time, Steve noticed him fiddling with his phone. "Look, pal, I know you've been through a lot, okay? I can't pretend I've walked in your shoes and know exactly what you're feeling in that great big Dorito-shaped chest of yours, but we did a lot of damage to the city today, even if we didn't mean to. I was born here, and so were you. New York is our home and no matter how far either of us try to run away from it, she'll always be at the base of us." Tony scratched the side of his head. Steve was pretty sure this was the most serious he'd ever seen the Stark heir and he wasn't sure if the contrast between the frivolous guy striding into the SHIELD op and immediately boosting himself as the center of attention and the sober fellow before him was comforting or frightening. Probably a combination of the two. 

"My point is, we've thrown ourselves into a media storm whether we meant to or not. I'm holding a fundraiser to try and take a bit of the strain off the New York taxpayers who'll be coughing up an arm and a leg if none of us bother to do something about it. It'll be good press if you come." 

"You want me to be a show pony," Steve deadpanned. "Milk as much money as I can from rich benefactors." 

"Yes and no," Tony told him. "I want you to be there because you want to be there and because...," and though Steve didn't know him very well, he could not miss the shift in expression that rose and fell on his features, quick as a bolt of lightning. "...because it could be beneficial to you." 

"Beneficial."

"That's what I said."

"For me." 

"You going deaf in your old age, Rogers?" Tony snarked, putting a hand on his hip and looking over the rim of his glasses with a little leer. "I can make you a pair of hearing aids. Get you a walker. Even spring for a Hoveround with a red, white and blue decal—"

Steve raised a hand. "Stop talking," he said weakly. "I don't know what that last thing is, but I'm good. Okay. I'll stick around for your fundraiser. I'll be your dancing monkey." He couldn't help the way his nose wrinkled as he recalled the sharp scent of expensive booze and thick perfume and the smell of cigar smoke cluttering various ballrooms across the country from his USO tour days. Steve couldn't even remember how many hands of sleezy Senators he'd shaken, how many corrupt politicians, all the women who tried to get into his pants when the only one he'd ever loved was overseas, risking his life for Steve. "But once the party's over, I'm leaving." 

"Okay," Tony agreed gamely and he winked at Steve. "But I doubt you'll want to go." 

With that, Steve was left to wonder what that meant as he watched Tony climb into his flashy orange sport's car and drive away. 

*

When Bucky turned up to Diana's, she already seemed to be waiting for him. Her sword and shield were on the coffee table, her costume, still as pristine as it was the first time he'd seen her in it, draped across her elegant white couch. "If things had gotten any worse," she said, "I'd have joined the fight." 

He did not ask her how the battle could have gotten _worse._ "Did you see the news?" 

She flicked her eyes up from where she was gathering her things, moving to put them back in a compact trunk that gleamed a dull gold. "What part of the news?" Diana asked. Her shoulders were a bit tight, on the defensive. 

"Di," Bucky sighed. "You know what part of the news I mean." 

Her uniform, sword and shield were all dropped without an ounce of care, though Bucky knew once this moment had passed, she'd arrange everything neatly. "I don't understand how SHIELD could go and try to have a copycat of such an iconic figure. Whoever wore the costume held their own, yes, but it's disgraceful—"

"It was him," he said. "It wasn't a copycat, Diana, it was  _Steve_." 

For her credit, Diana did not so much as blink at him stupidly, didn't even falter. He loved her for that. "Explain." 

Bucky explained, pulling details from the stories he was fed by both Fury and Tony. His conclusion was: "There's going to be a gala tomorrow. Tony's orchestrating the whole thing. He wants us to meet there." 

Diana huffed. "Of course he does." 

"He also suggested I stay here so I don't lose my mind in the next twenty-four hours." 

They had settled across from one another at her table in the kitchen, both nursing cups of wine that had little effect on them. She reached for his hand, the metal one, and squeezed firmly. "Allow me to help you dress for the occasion?" 

"Will you cut my hair, too?" 

She didn't question that bit, nodding as he spoke. "You think Anthony would have an issue with one more guest attending his get-together?" 

"You? Diana, he's known you half his life, of course he wouldn't have a problem." 

"Good," she smiled, and there was a glow about her features that he had not seen in ages. Diana patted his knuckles twice then jerked her head towards the hall. "Come, James. Let's get started." 

He trailed after her into the bathroom and felt like his life had been on pause since nineteen forty-four and the gears were just beginning to turn again.

Words could not describe his lightness.

*

The following morning, Steve returned back to his apartment from his run to find Romanoff sitting on the counter reading the morning paper. She had coffee going, had kicked off her boots by the front door so her violet sock-clad feet could be clearly seen. He loitered in the doorway, startled by how laid back she appeared. Without looking up, she said: "I brought pastries," and nodded at a pink box tied up with a small bow. "I hope you like éclairs." 

Steve had never had an éclair. It sounded French and he thought of fondue and of Howard and Peggy— who he had planned to go see because she was  _alive_ and in DC— and of course his thoughts traveled to Bucky, because his thoughts were always filled with Bucky and he didn't think he'd be much in the mood for anything, not even Romanoff's foodstuffs. "Do you make a habit of breaking into people's houses?" 

"Only until those people give me keys," she said, hopping off the counter and neatly folding the up the paper to be passed to him. "Sleep okay?" 

"I guess," he said. Steve might have snagged three hours of solid rest. He'd woke up to the sound of metal crashing against icy waters and Bucky's wordless scream as his arms pin-wheeled backward into a snowy ravine, both echoing in his ears, each sight sticking to the undersides of his eyelids. "Could've been worse." 

She cocked a doubtful eyebrow at him. "Uh- _huh_." 

He was losing the small high he achieved with a good, hard run and the low that was washing over him made his tongue snappish and his pool of patience shallow. "Seriously, Romanoff, what's with the house call?" 

She studied him with that same intensity she had on the helicarrier. "You know, Clint is the one who recruited me. Originally, he'd been sent on a mission to kill me, but something in him said:  _hey_.  _This one has the potential to be good_." Romanoff's eyes, bottle green like glass from bottles he used to find down at the beach, half buried under gritty sand, half pulled out by the unforgiving hands of the ocean. "I carry that with me every day, in every action I make. I keep it like an oath buried in my pocket, in my head, as a reminder that I have changed for the better. He made me better. Makes me better. We all have our person we want nothing more than to keep from disappointing.”

Pale blue-grey irises swam up to snag at his mind’s eye. A cupid’s bow. A cleft chin, the perfect little dip to rest a thumb. Dark hair, free from product and falling across a wide forehead. A musk that Steve would know blindly. Square palms, slender digits. The dimples at the base of tanned back. He shook himself, shoving away the flickers of half-formed features to nod mutely. Steve didn’t think he could form words if he wanted to.

Romanoff just kept watching him.

"There’s this line I read ages ago that keeps running through my head," Steve told her quietly, after he felt that her words had sunk deeply enough into him that he'd not forget a single syllable. "The one that goes: "It's a funny thing coming home. Nothing changes. Everything looks the same, feels the same, even smells the same. You realize what's changed is you." And I can't shake it. I didn't even  _like_ that book, but it's like a house-fly. It won't stop buzzing in my ears."

"I should have known," she said, deadpan. "Of course a fossil like you would have read Fitzgerald."

"And I should be shocked that a fetus like you would have even  _heard_ of Fitzgerald," Steve countered and he felt a bit of the tightness in his chest ebb away when Natasha shot him a toothy grin, pleased at his sass. 

"There's that crack in that stoic mask of patriotism I've been looking for," she said, lips twisting into a more reserved smile, but a smile all the same. "Would you like to try an éclair now?" 

The knots in his stomach had loosened. He nodded. 

Steve liked éclairs. Really,  _really_ liked éclairs. Before Natasha left, claiming she needed to get down to NBC studios to do a soundbite spreading news of Tony's fundraiser that evening, she stood at his side and held his gaze evenly with her own. 

“Just wait," Natasha said softly, squeezing his bicep in passing. "Just wait for it." 

The door clicked just as soft as she left. Steve wasn't sure what he was supposed to be anticipating.  

*

Once in the spring after Howard and Maria died, day three of Bucky having been invited and in the midst of staying at Tony’s mansion in Malibu, Tony leveled him with a look far too serious to be on his face at just after nine in the morning. “Tell me about Steve.”

Bucky stared, not quite believing that he’d heard correctly.

Tony, true to form, rolled his eyes. “No, you’re hearing isn’t failing—just… just do it, yeah?”

Another moment of squinting, Bucky waiting for the ball to drop and for Tony to shoot him finger guns, saying something like: "Ha! You  _thought_ I cared about your feelings!" But when that did not occur and Tony's eyebrows rose in challenge, Bucky huffed a laugh, muttered, "Alright, Junior, but you asked for it.

“We met when we were kids—of course, he’d gotten himself into a fight that he couldn’t possibly have won and I heard a ruckus from the street and stepped in. He gave me the dirtiest look when I finished the fight for him, but he took my hand when I offered it to help him off the ground. We got to talking and it turned out we lived in the same apartment complex, him on the second floor, my family on the sixth. Since Steve’s asthma was so bad, I tended to go to him instead of the other way around because two flights of stairs was awful enough on his lungs, but six? Once he’d had an attack from trying to get to my place so bad that I could hear him wheezing two floors away.

“Anyway, his Ma worked long shifts at a hospital in the city. You’d have liked Sarah, Tony. She was a spit-fire and the gentlest woman all rolled into one. Had a voice like a lark and sang just as well, too. I had three sisters that demanded most of my parent’s attention so with Sarah out the house and my needing to get a bit of space in my place, it was almost too easy for Steve and I to drift together.

“We didn’t keep secrets. Not from each other. I don’t think anyone in the world knows that Steve failed his social studies test on the French Revolution in thirty-three or that he hated cabbage soup with a purple passion but he ate it anyway, because that’s all his Ma could afford and he didn’t want to be a fuss.” Bucky’s narrative didn’t follow much of a straight line. If a fact about Steve came to mind, he simply slipped it into the air. “He had two left feet. I tried to teach him to dance when we were sixteen, but he just stumbled over himself and we ended up just swaying in his living room together.

“He had a sweet tooth, but we never had extra money for penny candy. His favorite song was ‘How Deep is the Ocean’ by Irvin Berlin and he couldn’t carry a tune to save his life and he sang it anyway, top of his lungs just to press my buttons. He liked to draw. Given his birthday was in July and Christmas was in December, if I got him a sketchbook on both of those occasions, it tended to work out that he preserved the paper until the latter celebration rolled around. He hoarded charcoal like it was going out of style. Never used colored pencils—he was partially color-blind.

“I knew I loved him when I was ten. I knew I was _in_ love with him when I was fourteen, but it took a few more years for us to get with the program. He made the first move—even before the uniform, Steve was so much braver than I was. The most stubborn asshole you’d ever meet, sure, but noble as hell, so sincere you it made you get this taste in your mouth if you looked at him long enough.  

“He never backed away from a fight and he might not have finished all of them, but Steve was always determined to have the last word. The amount of times I had to practically throw him over my shoulder and haul him away from round two or three… I can’t even put an _estimate_ on them. When the war began and the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, he was out the door to enlist before anyone in our building. The recruitment offices turned him away. Steve went to five different recruiting stations and it wasn’t until that night at the World’s Fair that Erskine saw what I saw in him every day and decided to take a chance on him. I wasn’t even out of the _city_ and he was already throwing his neck down on the chopping block—I gave him hell about that for weeks, after he pulled me off that lab table in Azzano.

“The Howlies knew about us, I think. Or if they didn’t they sure had their suspicions. And Peggy knew, obviously. Sarah, too. Sarah told me, once, right before she passed, that she was glad her son had someone who loved him so thoroughly, who could kick him into gear when he got into a rut. Said she was glad that she’d be leaving her only boy in the hands of someone that cared as much as she did. We shared a tent through the war—one of the perks of being a commanding officer was getting a shred more privacy than the rest. We never slept more than a few feet apart, not unless I got sent on a solo mission and half the time Peg would crash those, so.

“I’m so thankful for the years I got with him, Tony,” Bucky said, looking up from his folded hands to gauge Junior’s reaction. He was met with a pair of downcast brown eyes, Tony’s mouth set in a thin, pinched line. “No, no, don’t look like that, kid. Life throws you good and bad and Steve was so damn good. Everyone always thought that because he was so thin and sickly all the time that our relationship was one-way, that it was just me taking care of him. We took care of each other and watched each other’s backs for as long as we could. Everything I do, now and forevermore, in the name of helping people, I do for him. 

“He was and will forever be the most wonderful person I’ve ever met.”

Tony was silent for a beat, just one, and then he groaned, long and loud and languid. The moment of tenderness spawned from Bucky’s words was burst. “Never knew you were the type to wax poetic.”

“He’s the love of my life, Junior,” Bucky said, letting his shoulder lift and drop in a  _what can you do?_ sort of shrug. “Present tense. If I wasn’t—how’d you put it? ‘Waxing poetic’?—I don’t think I’d be doing it right.”

Tony shifted his gaze from Bucky’s face to a point just over Bucky’s shoulder. The line of his throat bobbed. “You think he’d like me? Steve?”

“What kind of question is that?” Bucky asked, genuinely surprised such a thought could have floated through Tony’s head, much less have gained enough weight to have been dropped out into the open. “Of course he would. Steve probably would be the first in line to call you a little shit, but yeah. At the end of the day, he’d sit you down and call you family. Why’d you ask?”

“Because I wanted to know about the guy behind the cowl, okay? And Peg’s been trying to get me to talk about my feelings and I thought that we could maybe help each other out and talk about your feelings, too.” Tony fidgeted, the tip of his nose twitching. Bucky stared at him, brow inching slowly up his forehead until he felt a series of lines marring his skin above his eyebrows. Tony threw up his hands in exasperation. “Fine, okay! It’s like I told you—the only version of Cap that I knew was Howard’s. That Cap was like a shiny toy to be totted around and bragged about. I never wanted to ask someone who _actually_ knew him because I saw how you got even when you volunteered the information.”

Bucky reached out to hold the side of Tony’s head in his right hand. “Don’t you know? Talking about Steve, sharing moments from his life with others enables him to live on. It took me a long time to realize that, myself, but if anyone with what I can tell are pure intentions asks me about Steve, I don’t much mind telling them what they want to hear. I used to be so selfish with my memories of him, and I still am, really. I’m working on it, slowly and surely.”

Tony batted Bucky’s hand away. “Not too shabby for a work-in-progress.”

*

Steve opened his door after he heard a firm series of knocks around two in the afternoon and found a neat box waiting for him. He poked it with the toe of his foot, saw a woman across the hall with an orange scarf slip her hand under her jacket near her hip and narrowed his eyes at her. She flushed lightly, never looking directly at him even as he scooped the box under his arm and snapped his door shut. 

It was a dapper black suit, three pieces. Crisp white shirt, dark blue tie. There was even a pair of dress shoes in his size. Out of curiosity, he pulled the getup on and found that it fit like it was made for him professionally. When he got to the bottom of the box, there was a note scrawled out in a messy hand:

“ _Rogers—_

_Since you’ve probably not got a suit just laying around, I figured I’d help you out and have one tailored for you. I took the liberty of hacking SHIELD’s files to get your measurements through your spanglely uniform. You’re welcome._

_—TS.”_

He couldn’t find it in himself to be upset. He had to save his energy for the shit-show that he’d be walking into that evening. 

*

Bucky and Diana turned up to the gala half an hour after it officially began: he wore a navy suit with an equally dark blue shirt, black dress shoes, black tie. He had shaved and cut his hair short enough that his profile would match perfectly with photos from before the war: Bucky figured that Steve would be more comforted by familiarity than by a Bucky with near-shoulder length hair and scruff. There was always time later for him to grow out his hair again, for Steve to see him as the person he’d become in his absence.

Diana looked like a million bucks, draped in a gorgeous turquoise number that left the skin of her shoulders bare but met at her neck to fall in a wave of silk down the middle of her back. Paired with gold cuffs similar enough to the bracelets of her uniform that Bucky raised an eyebrow, and she simply said: “Never know when the good can turn ugly,” with a little smile. Her hair was smoothed into a neat up-do, a neat line of lipstick red enough to rival the Peggy of nineteen forty-five applied to her mouth.

He offered his arm to her, and she draped her hand over the bend of his elbow. She squeezed his bicep. Bucky vowed to get her flowers when this was all said and done, because he knew that actually getting in the car, waiting as traffic was navigated—because even after a near-world ending experience, New York traffic was still cluttered and chaotic— and walking in through the lobby was the hardest part. He’d been so nervous on the ride over that had he not known better, he would have bet money that if he squeezed Diana’s hands any harder, he’d have shattered the bones of her fingers.

It was a fortunate thing that he had special access to Stark Tower. He nodded at the security guard as he and Diana strode to the private elevator instead of the public one where the rest of the guests were migrating to. The moment they were inside, though, he pressed the proper button and felt his stomach drop as they started to rise.

“James, you have nothing to worry about,” Diana said firmly, curling her hand to the side of his face and guiding his gaze to hers. Her eyes were so brown. She was wonderful and he was going to get her _so_ many flowers. “It’s been, what, two weeks? Three? He won’t have lost feeling for you in that time—on the contrary,” and she let her hand fall to gently straighten his tie, eyes flicking back up and settling on his features. “I believe that will have only made him love you more.”

He leaned in a kissed her brow. “Don’t let me make a fool of myself?”

“If you do, I can do something doubly idiotic if it will ease your anxieties,” she assured him, a mischievous tilt to her lips. “Table dance in my underthings? Act obnoxiously intoxicated and convince Anthony to fly me around right outside the windows in his Iron Man suit? Spill red wine on the predictably white dress of the richest lady here and start a loud argument about how it was clearly her fault when Hera and all the Gods are fully aware it was mine?”

Bucky was fighting a smile at _table dancing_ and couldn’t hold back a grin and a snort at the latter image Diana produced for him. He pecked her again on the brow, leaning away as the elevator doors parted. “Thank you.”

“Always.”

This was the last moment of peace that Bucky managed to secure. Upon stepping out into the party hall—an entire floor of the tower that had been decked out in golden lights and tastefully arranged tables, flower bouquets filled with blooms of Stark Industries electric blue at the center of each— he was bombarded by a reporter he recognized from the Los Angeles Times, who was closely followed by a series of politicians, a Supreme Court Justice, a line of actors and actresses, and, finally at the end, Tony.

He couldn’t help but narrow his eyes at Tony’s sheepish expression. “Would you believe,” Bucky asked without a hint of humor. “That only _all_ of them asked my opinion of the replacement Captain America?”

Tony tipped and straightened his head in consideration. “Unfortunately, I can.” Junior reached out, lightly brushing the shoulder of Bucky’s suit jacket. “You look good for a senior citizen. Now we just need to find your guy—who I have not seen at all, by the way. Romanoff swore she and Barton had him secure, but I’m not so sure.” At Bucky’s _look_ , Tony was sure to backtrack. “I mean, he’s got to be here, right? You old folks are real sticklers about showing up early to everything and maintaining perfect attendance.”

“Tony?”

A quirked brow.

“Please stop talking.”

Diana, who had disappeared some time ago to try and comb the crowds for any sightings of Steve, fell back in at his side. “That’s the greatest piece of advice I’ve heard all evening.” She passed a flute of champagne to Tony, then one to Bucky, keeping the third for herself. There was already a neat ring of red around the rim from where she’d fitted her mouth to the edge. “You had James, here, worried sick for you yesterday, Anthony.”

Tony batted his eyelashes at her, pouting no better than a child. “Weren’t you concerned, Princess?”

“Yes,” she said smoothly, mouth twitching. “Concerned I’d have to get out to help clean up the mess you were making.”

Squawking indignantly, Tony made to open his mouth when an older dark-skinned man touched his arm and immediately hauled him off into a conversation concerning quantum physics. Bucky trailed away, moving to a less densely populated area so he could better hear Diana over the live band across and the social blabbering pressing into his ears.  

“Any sign?”

Diana shook her head, mouth a flat line. “None. I saw your friend Natasha, though, and Clinton by the bar with Banner, but no Steve.”

Bucky remembered cool nights curled together in a canvas tent in various sites across the European theater, instances where Steve had filled Bucky in on the earliest happenings of Captain America, the finer, more attractive replacement of Uncle Sam. Steve had described endless nights filled trying to charm people exactly like ones gathered, hoping to get as many war bonds sold for the USO, the stage make-up, the increasingly elaborate shows he was made to learn the song and dance to all across the country. Steve had hated it, but he did it anyway.

“He’s here,” Bucky said, more to himself than Diana. “Or he will be. If it was just a regular bash, Steve would have ditched, sure, but this is to help people. He’ll show.”

Diana made to say something only for her spine to straighten and the very tips of her fingers to twitch like she was itching for a weapon hidden on her person. She stilled, looking over her shoulder.

Thor had stopped a few feet away, cutting quite the impressive figure in his burgundy suit and his steel-gray button-down. His shoes were coal black and shiny. It was a bit odd, seeming him in mortal clothes and not wielding his hammer as he so typically was in grainy news footage—Bucky wondered if he’d left it somewhere in the Tower in the hopes there’d be no world ending events. His eyes, older than even Diana’s, flicked between her and Bucky bemusedly.

“I am Thor, son of Odin,” the God of Thunder proclaimed, offering them both polite beams. “Might I inquire as to whom you both may be?”

“James Barnes,” Bucky said. “I occasionally wrangle Tony away from questionable life choices.”

Thor laughed, a booming, golden noise. “An honorable profession, indeed. And you, fair one ?”

“Diana Prince,” she told him, relaxing once it sank in that there was no threat that needed to be prevented in the exceedingly large build of the other god. He had no doubt she could handle her own, probably had a dagger of Athena or some such stashed away in a thigh holster under her gown.  

“You do not carry the same aura as the rest in the room, Lady Prince.” Thor said, voice as grand as his person. Bucky had the feeling he was as kind as he was built, a being of many years and much knowledge. 

Diana smiled, fascinated by the present proceedings. “Nor do you, Son of Asgard.”

His back straightened as hers had as though he recognized a spirit parallel to his within Diana. “Where do you hail from?”

“Themyscira as a daughter of Zeus,” she murmured, so low no one else in vicinity would have a hope of hearing save who Diana wanted to. “But everyone around here believes me to be a socialite of New York and I’d quite like to keep it that way.”

Thor bowed, brushing a kiss across Diana’s knuckles. “As you wish, my lady.” His eyes flicked to Bucky. “My friend, do you mind if I steal her away for a mo’?” His gaze jumped back to Diana. “I would very much like to know of your home? Perhaps shed a bit of light on Asgardian technology in exchange?”

Diana looked to Bucky, searching his face to for any sort of reaction to this. He smiled, nodding in encouragement: Thor and Diana were, it was becoming rapidly apparent, two very like-minded individuals, both older than their perpetually youthful bodies would have one believe, both exceedingly intelligent and packing knowledge that could only be understood by the other. He couldn’t miss the glint of curiosity in Diana’s eyes. Hell, if Bucky wasn’t so concerned with locating Steve, he would be second in line to hearing about said Asgardian tech as that likely involved advanced pieces that could enable _god damn space travel_ or something equally fantastic. Geeky, fourteen year old Bucky was jumping up and down and yelling; exhausted, close to collapsing ninety-four year old Bucky had a one-track mind and wouldn’t divert his focus until his task was fulfilled.

“I’ll be fine,” he assured her, nodding for emphasis to his claim. Bucky reached out to shake Thor’s hand and found his fingers engulfed in a warm, firm clasp. After a bit of pleasantries and one final, long look exchanged with Diana, Bucky turned in the opposite direction to start a search of his own.

*

Steve did his rounds in fifteen minute intervals: fifteen minutes of solid “schmoozing”, as Tony called it, fifteen minutes of hiding out in the shadiest corner of the bar with all the other wallflowers. He and Bruce had exchanged mutual looks of dread and distaste more times than he could count. The suit was a hit with nearly every dame (and even earned some lingering looks from a fair few men) and he was pretty sure he’d never be able to get the smell of new money off his hands.

The fact is this: Bucky had always liked large social gatherings like these because Bucky was the type of person who could light up the room, light up the whole damn block, even. Before the serum, Steve stuck to warming seats at a table while Bucky would whirl a girl around the dance floor and after. After had been the war and there had been little time for happy occasions and the last song he’d seen Bucky dance to was “We’ll Meet Again” by Vera Lynn in an abandoned barn. Mortia had found a radio, Steve and Bucky had claimed they were heading to get some sleep—when a song like that comes on and you’re in a situation like they were, where time was limited and sweet moments are precious as gemstones, one didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth and refuse a dance.

They held each other close.

Steve should have never let him go.

Fuck, he really wished that alcohol had some sort of impact on his system other than leaving a terrible taste in the lining of his mouth.

(He hadn’t missed what it felt like to be so completely and utterly alone in a room brimming with people and sound. No man is an island, but Steve sure believed he was awfully close to becoming one.)

There was a huge mirror over the bar, a tactical advantage, really, for being able to people watch without making it totally obvious. Steve, given he was on the last leg of his fifteen minute wallflower phase of his Unfortunately Made to Be Social But Also Anti-Social cycle, he was allowing himself to sit quietly until the song of the moment concluded. The band was playing something slow and jazzy, the type of tune that never failed to make his heartstrings throb with thoughts of years gone by and couples were moving to the wide dance floor that had, for a time, served as the general “schmoozing” area until Tony shared the first dance with his girl, Pepper, and the rest of the guests followed suit.

Steve could see them, Pepper with her head resting on Tony’s shoulder, Tony looking down at her in his arms like he was the luckiest son of a bitch to ever live, simply because he got to breathe the same air as she did. He wondered if Natasha had convinced Barton to go out there, but, upon further scanning for a distinctive head of red, Steve was willing to bet they had abstained.

The music rose and fell, hitting a sweet note, and Steve could swear that he saw the men’s arms tighten around their girls, like that note was the start of a goodbye they were unwilling to give. A dark haired fellow that had his back to Steve had jerked slightly at the high sound, head lifting up and he shook himself, looking back down at the equally dark haired woman he was swaying with.

The small crystal glass he’d been holding between his hands shattered as he whipped around to be sure his eyes were not deceiving him. He knew that profile, those shoulders, like he would know the shade of Peggy’s lipstick or his Ma’s laugh.

And—and—and it was _Bucky_ that held the woman close to him, who laughed at something she murmured into his ear. They were speaking and looking on one another like they had known each other in another life and were so happy they got to share another life together, too. Steve felt his eyes burn, felt his center of gravity sharply shift like he’d been shot and was falling backward in slow-motion. He staggered away from the bar, leaving a small pile of glass in front of his stool. He managed to break through the fog of emotion which was attempting to smother him long enough to turn tail and haul ass to the nearest elevator.

Every part of him was screaming to go back, to step in between the dancing pair. If he turned back, it really would be Bucky and when Steve asked, “Mind if I cut in?” Bucky would smile that slow, heated smile that promised a night filled to the brim with intimate touches and warm praises and everything that Steve could never get again because Bucky was dead. He should have known better than to come tonight, damn whatever the press thought of him if he hadn’t shown.

Steve knew he was nowhere close to the ballpark of ‘okay’. He should have expected to hallucinate such a painfully real image in the midst of the hand-shaking and the _aw shucks, ma’am_ production he was putting on. As the seconds unraveled before him, Steve’s line of sight narrowed in on the closest path out the room—people became moving blurs, the lights sharp pin-pricks against his vision, all sounds having gone warbling and distant, a radio out of tune.

He bumped into Natasha on his way out and one of her small, strong hands clasped his suit sleeve. “What’s wrong?” she asked, voice pitched low. If he knew better, he’d label her tone _concerned._ The song he’d been waiting to conclude had just wrapped up. Something upbeat was starting.

Steve shook her off. “I can’t be in there anymore,” he said, leaving absolutely no room for argument.

Her black dress fit her body perfectly, highlighted her every curve, clinging to the long line of her legs. Natasha’s mouth thinned. “Okay,” she said, utterly neutral. “Okay.”

Her hand fell away from his sleeve and Steve wasted no time in starting up his escape once more.

Making it to the elevator in record time, Steve curled a hand over his mouth to keep from vomiting up what few tiny finger foods he’d managed to knock back in the last few hours. “Jarvis, get me out of here.”

He leaned hard on the cold wall of the elevator, pressing his temple to the metal and letting out a soft sound of pain when the floor beneath him gave a small jolt upward instead of moving down. 

“Jarvis, I said I wanted to leave,” Steve said, cold and hard. He suddenly understood what it was like to see ghosts and absolutely loathed the chill that broke out over his body, the gooseflesh on his arms and his nape. If it wasn’t for the serum, he’d be having the worst asthma attack of his life right then for all his lungs threatened to turn themselves inside out, for all his heart was pounding with the intensity of a tribal drum.

“While I heard your askance quite clearly, sir, I think it would be best if you waited up here for a bit.” There was a pause, as though the artificial intelligence was considering its next phrases very carefully. “Just be patient for a bit.”

Without his notice, tears had sprang to his eyes and started to weep out his eyes corners, impairing his vision even as the doors to the elevator glided silently open and released him onto one of the residential floors. Steve staggered to the closest seat—a leather couch, rather flat and geometric—and collapsed onto it with no intention of moving until he could feel anything below the neck again.

*

"James," Natasha grabbed him by the forearm, spinning him away from where Diana had been telling him the latest gossip about one of the more obnoxious ladies on the socialite scene. "I just passed Rogers heading to the elevator. Tony gave Jarvis an order to send him up to the residential area if he were to bolt." She let her hand fall down so she was holding his right wrist, gave his pulse point a squeeze. 

It was perhaps the shock to his system that  _this is happening, it's going down, Steve, Steve, Steve_ that he blurted: "You couldn't have told me sooner?" 

Natasha leveled him with an unimpressed look, quadrupling the pressure she had on his wrist. "Would you have really liked for your first moments with each other in sixty-seven years to have been plastered on the cover of the morning paper on every newsstand across the country or would you like a bit of privacy?”

Diana bumped Bucky in the side with her elbow. "She's absolutely right, you know." 

Bucky did know. Bucky also knew that he had somewhere to be and that somewhere actually had a pin-pointed location. He smacked a kiss to the side of Diana's head, dipping in to touch Natasha's cheek and do the same to her. "Thank you," he said, breathless as his heart began to fly in his chest. "Tell Tony and Pepper it was a great party. If all goes well, none of you will see either of us for the next week." 

Natasha gave him a wolfish grin, saluting him, and Diana barked out a laugh. "You've waited a long time, James," she said, her brown eyes soft and so sincere that Bucky only just stamped down on the instinct to hug her. "Go get him." 

He went, slipping through the crowd with incredible speed and smoothness. Several people called his name—a Senator, a musician, a pair of models—but he didn't turn, didn't so much as avert his line of sight. A tipsy couple stumbled off the elevator just as he was stepping on and he glanced at the ceiling as the doors closed. "Jarvis?" 

"I already know where you'll ask to go, sir," and Bucky could have sworn there was a softer note to Jarvis's mechanized voice. 

Bucky looked at himself in the reflective surface of the elevator, straightening his tie, nudging what few strands of hair had slipped out of place back into proper order. He had to mop at his brow with his pocket hankie because he'd been so anxious the entirety of the evening, even if he had been minimally distracted part of the time. He had barely aged since he and Steve last met, just a few very faint wrinkles around his eyes that could pass as laughter lines. He attempted to channel a bit of Tony's confidence, even said: "You still look good, Barnes," but he couldn't speak any louder than a whisper. 

It had been little over two weeks for Steve since Bucky "died" and it had been sixty-seven years for Bucky since Steve had done the same. He fastened a stern look on his face and jabbed a metal finger at his own reflection, said: "You're being a ridiculous schmuck.  _Jesus_." 

After what felt like an eternity, the elevators dinged open and Bucky immediately heard: “Stark, if you’re here to drag me back to that circus show down there, it’s not happening.”

Just the sound of Steve’s voice, low and strained, was enough to serve as a tight fist around Bucky’s neck. Steve was so close, just around the corner and Bucky suddenly felt as though his feet had been dipped in concrete and that weight had him stilling in place. He couldn’t move. If he moved, he’d fracture and split apart into a million pieces.

( _Dust to dust, ashes to ashes_ and all that.)

“Stark?” Steve repeated, an edge of caution leaking into his tone. He shifted his weight on the floorboards, bracing. “Romanoff?”

Bucky drew a slow breath. A voice that sounded oddly like Peggy’s sounded from the back of his mind: _you bloody wanker, Barnes, move your feet_! He smoothed a trembling hand over his hair, dampened his mouth with the tip of his tongue. He wasn’t sure why he couldn’t move, why it was so much of a hassle to just get the muscles of his legs edging forward. Maybe it was the uncertainty that the moment he and Steve were within touching-distance, the floor would fall out from under him and he’d wake up in a shitty motel bed on the other side of the country in 1975. Maybe it was because he thought Steve would have somehow changed and decided he didn’t love Bucky anymore, wouldn’t love the person Bucky became without Steve to ground him. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

He was surprised he’d not drowned in _maybes_.

That passage he’d read all those years ago, about being a soldier and having seen worse sights than those before him, floated up into the front of his mind. Steve was far from the worst thing he’d ever seen. The polar opposite and yet he still felt as though he was about to go out before a firing squad.

He didn’t have to force himself to round the corner because, in the midst of his silent panic, Steve had come into view, that stupid vibranium bull’s-eye on his arm, like he was expecting a fight. Bucky wasn’t sure why he was so surprised—Steve always was the braver one out of the two of them.

The sound of the shield clattering to the floor didn’t even make Bucky flinch; his senses were trained on sight, everything else falling away. Even though Bucky had seen that face a thousand times, hell, he’d seen it more since it had been taken from him than during the years where it laid on a pillow mere millimeters away, but… it was like he was seeing Steve for the first time. So near, his eyes were far bluer than they had the right to be, hair golden and flopping across his forehead. That crooked beak, those sinfully pink lips, parting and closing and parting as Steve’s breath quickened out of shock. The heroic jaw, the sweet earlobes, the furrowed brow.

Time had only made Bucky love him more.

“Bucky?” Steve whispered, wracked by disbelief.

He broke out into a grin, swallowing past the massive lump in his throat. “S’me,” he said hoarsely, like he hadn’t spoken since they’d last been together and these were his first words.

(They sure as hell felt like his first words with the way his tongue felt so heavy.)

Bucky cleared his throat, taking a small step forward. “It’s me, Stevie.”

Steve let out the saddest noise he’d ever heard, a whine more than anything, faltering back a step. “But… B-but you _fell_. A-and I didn’t—”

He couldn’t not come closer at that. Bucky shook his head, eliminating the distance between them to curl his flesh hand to the hinge of Steve’s jaw, biting back a gasp at finally— _finally_ —touching him after so, so long. He was so _warm_. “You couldn’t help that,” Bucky said firmly, because he’d gone over the scenario a thousand, a million, a billion times and knew the outcome would never change. “You’d have fallen, too.”

Steve looked far too close to collapsing, looked how Bucky’s ribs felt from the rapid pounding of his heart. “I-I should have tried harder.”

“You did your best,” he soothed, feeling more and more light-headed with each passing second. “It was my choice to take that mission, just like it was my choice to join up with you and the rest of the Commandos, just like it was my choice to—,” Bucky cut himself off and though he wanted to dip his head to get a small reprieve from Steve’s broken expression, but he couldn’t. He didn’t dare look away. Much quieter, he said: “Just like it was my choice to love you with every piece of myself.”

“How do I know this isn’t a dream?” Steve breathed, gripping at the lapels of Bucky’s suit in a way that suggested letting go wasn’t an option.

Bucky’s left hand, tucked away in pocket, whirled softly. He traced his flesh fingers over Steve’s jaw, over his temple, his eyebrows which had tugged together, over the bridge of his nose. He only stopped when he was cupping Steve’s face in his palm again, thumb settled just below Steve’s lower lip. “Want me to prove it to you?” he asked and when Steve didn’t move, didn’t utter a word, Bucky took that as his cue to keep going. “The first time I told you I loved you, we were sixteen and we both played sick and we laid out of school so we could squeeze in your bed all day and kiss for hours without interruption. You kissed me on your birthday in thirty-six because you were the brave one—you’d always been the brave one. You fed a mangy little cat called Pickles for months during the Depression even though you were allergic and just about had an asthma attack after you’d put a fresh bowl of milk out on the fire escape. You told me the first color you saw when you stepped out of Howard Stark’s machine was red and it was Peg’s lipstick. When you pulled me off that table in Zola’s lab, I thought I’d died, but I’d been alright with it, because at least I got to see your face— _mphf!_ ”

He was cut off by Steve’s mouth slamming into his. Bucky let out a high whine when Steve’s tongue parted the seam of Bucky’s lips. He’d forgotten how _good_ Steve tasted, how hot the inside of his mouth was. How could he have ever forgotten? Bucky’s left hand landed hesitantly on Steve’s side, spanning the side of his ribs and tugging him closer when it truly sank in _he’s solid, he’s warm, he’s with me. He’s alive and he still wants me._

Steve pulled back panting, eyes clenched shut. Bucky brushed his fingertips over his cheek, smiling gently when that drew a shudder from him. “When I saw you with that dame, Buck—I thought I was hallucinating and god help me you were the prettiest damn fever dream I ever had,” Steve said, no louder than a whisper, hands slipping under Bucky’s suit jacket and landing on the middle of his back. He could feel the exact shape of Steve’s warm palms, keening into the touch.

“She’s my friend. Like my sister. She’s the one that saved me—same one that saved you during that mission in Munich in forty-four. She’s… an advanced. More like Thor than either of us.”

He received a kiss with twice the intensity as the first and he swallowed, squeezing Steve by the nape of the neck and pulled away just far enough to say: “If you still don’t believe this is real, well—,” and he lifted his metal hand where Steve could clearly see it, wriggling his fingers in a little wave.

Steve made another one of those disarming, wounded sounds at the back of his throat, reaching out for Bucky to settle the silver hand over Steve’s palm. Steve darted in and kissed Bucky’s temple, nosing a few strands of hair that had fallen onto his forehead away. “How…?”

“You know that Zola did something to me when he had me in that lab,” Bucky said, turning his hand over so Steve could keep inspecting, keep learning this new piece. “Gave me some bastardized version of Erskine’s serum which is probably the only reason I survived the fall and lived to see you again.” A pause for them to turn their heads, for their lips to meet. “Diana, my friend, had been tracking the train, too. She saw me fall and she beat the shit out of a bunch of Russian foot soldiers who were, presumably, going to drag me off to a Hydra cell. She took me to the island where her and her people live and had to amputate from the ball of my shoulder, down.

“Time passed and Tony inevitably took an interest in technology like Howard, only Tony has about double the brains as his old man. He went to this real fancy school in Massachusetts and this?” Another wriggle of his metal digits. “Was his final project before he graduated.”

Steve linked his fingers through Bucky’s, never showing any sign of discomfort from the contrast between the heat of Bucky’s right hand and the chill from the left. “Can you feel this?” The muscles under Steve’s skin rolled as he squeezed Bucky’s hand.

“Pressure,” Bucky told him. "I can only feel extreme heat or cold." 

Steve got this look on his face, head tipping a few degrees to the side before he looked a finger through the knot of Bucky's tie, giving it a downward tug to loosen it, to pull it all the way off. "Can you feel this?" he murmured. Bucky couldn't miss the way his pupils were starting to swallow up that precious, precious blue, the way Steve sidled closer, the one arm he had around Bucky's middle tightening. 

He felt a slow grin lift the corners of his mouth, flashing a bit of teeth. "I can." Steve's deft fingers were going at the buttons of Bucky's dress shirt, all six undone in under fifteen seconds. Those large hands of Steve's moved to push away Bucky's suit jacket and his shirt, leaving him in his pants and shoes with Steve fully dressed. Steve's brows knitted together, eyes landing on healed canvas that was Bucky's left shoulder region. So much was flitting on and off of Steve's face— pain, lust, sadness, a joy that could not be fully contained within his body— and Bucky was moving in to pull him in for the tightest hug he'd ever had right when Steve dropped his mouth to point where metal met skin, scar tissue raised and rigid around the attaching port. Steve’s tongue darted out, dragging soft kitten-licks along healed-pink skin. 

"I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” Steve choked, fingers sinking into the small of Bucky's back. He felt moisture gather on Steve’s face and had to break partially away to swipe at the tears that nudged their way from Steve’s eyes, making those big baby blues impossibly bluer.

“How many times do I have to say it wasn’t your fault, huh?” Bucky asked him, dragging his hand through Steve’s hair, scraping his nails over his scalp on the upstroke, smoothing his hair on the backstroke.

Steve let out a hiccup of a laugh, shuddering at Bucky’s ministrations. “N’til it sticks.”

That left a niggling question to be prompted then answered. Bucky ghosted a feather-light kiss over Steve’s lips, clenching his eyes shut. “You don’t mind it? The arm?”

Unconsciously, Steve’s arm tightened around his middle. “Buck, no,” Steve said, sounding horrified that Bucky would think such a thing. “Of course I don’t mind it. It’s a part of you. You could literally have a broken broom handle for an arm or no arm at all and the only thing I’d have to say is how god damn thankful I am that you’re alive to have one or the other.”

Bucky, more confident now, slipped his hands under Steve's suit jacket and repeated the motion Steve had performed on him. Tie, shirt, jacket, all landed on the floor in a heap of fine, overly expensive material. "Wanna know a secret?" He didn't wait for Steve to give an affirmative; even if he said no, Bucky needed to put the words in his mind where there couldn't possibly be any sort of doubt down the line. "All this time, there was never a day that passed that I didn't think of you. I remember, once, back in the seventies, Diana asked me how long I loved you for, and I just smiled at her.” Bucky held Steve’s face between his hands, held his eyes so there could be no second-guessing. “So long as I’ve known you, there ain’t ever been a time when I’ve not loved you. It was there when you were and when you weren’t, when I was pissed as hell for you getting into another fight and when I was mopping blood off your face in our tiny bathroom.  It was there when your body shook with laughter and when your frame was wracked with pneumonia—my love for you has never left. It’s too deep into my bones to go anywhere.”

“You’re it for me,” Steve said, soft and true. There noses were brushing they were so close. They'd not gotten more than a few inches apart ever since Bucky closed the distance.“Always have been.”

“Stevie,” Bucky whispered, curling into him, pressing impossibly close. Having Steve in his arms again, after feeling so empty for so, so long, was like having every empty piece of him filled all at once. It was like he, himself, had unknowingly been frozen and with each caress, each second spent wrapped around each other, more of him thawed, stepping into the sunshine to live again.

“Fuck, I love you so much,” Steve whispered, pressing frantic, hot kisses over Bucky’s jaw, his cheeks, his forehead, his neck, sucking a mark into his jugular and lapping at the irritated skin with one, long sweep of his tongue. His nose bumped Bucky’s jaw as he said: “I thought I'd never get to say that to someone ever again because they wouldn't be you and _I love you,_ _I love you, I love you_. I’m sorry I left you alone. I didn’t mean to.” His head came up so their noses were parallel and their mouths met, sinking into the old motions like it hadn’t been two weeks and seventy and a million years since they’d last done this. “Sweetheart, you gotta know I didn’t mean to.”

“I know, baby,” Bucky said, cupping the hinge of Steve’s jaw in his palm, brushing his thumb in consoling, soothing circles. Those big blue eyes were florid around the edges and growing brighter as tears were drawn closer to the surface. “And you gotta know that as soon as I was lucid enough, I tried to send word to you that I was okay. I didn’t mean for you to hurt so bad. I wasn’t alone all that time—I had people who looked out for me. It’s okay.”

(It would be okay. They would be okay.)

Bucky pressed his hips against Steve's, shifting just right so he could be  _felt_. "I don't know if you forgot, but you started something a few minutes ago, Rogers," Bucky murmured, fingering the belt loop closest to Steve's fly. "We've got plenty of time to break out the tissues. I haven't had you in almost seventy years and that? That's a goddamn affront to humanity is what it is."

The heat that had been so quickly sapped away at the sight of the scars along Bucky's side returned full-force to Steve's eyes, settling in a flush along the circles of his cheeks, staining his neck a pretty pink. "Can I tell you a secret, too?" 

A nod, a smile, a hand on Steve's side to guide him backward in the direction of the bedroom.  

"When I first came out the ice, everyone talked to me like I was so fragile. Like if they used the toaster in front of me, I would jump up on the counter and start shouting about witchcraft. And they gave me a briefing on how technology's advanced and how they've even got a vaccine to prevent TB, Buck. But, even with all that aside, even with all the color and sound, I don't think I've seen so clearly, heard each and everything around me until I saw you again." Steve pressed him up against the doorway, once they'd managed to navigate through the living room, around the corner and to the second door on the left. "When I woke up and you weren't here, I was so sure I had lost a part of myself I'd never get back. Look at us now. Look where we are." 

They didn't even break apart as they fluidly stepped out of their pants, tipping into each other to kick off their shoes, to strip off their socks. "The future," Bucky said as he kicked the door closed in their wake. "Told you we'd get there one day." 

*

He took Steve apart with his tongue and his mouth and his fingers. Time may not have claimed his memory, but it did dull things even if he fought for them to remain in perfect, untainted color. He’d forgotten just how gooseflesh rose on Steve’s arms when Bucky took one of his nipples between his teeth, laving over the pert little rosebud with careful strokes of his tongue; how blood rose so prettily in Steve’s chest and spread up his shoulders and spilled into his neck and face, highlighting the lines of his cheekbones like a masterpiece that belonged in the Met; how wrecked Steve got when Bucky would lick him open, fingers working to milk at his prostate and bring him off the edge into bliss.

“You’re a work of art,” Bucky breathed, swiping the mess from Steve’s abdomen. “A national treasure.”

“I’m yours,” Steve returned, slipping his fingers into Bucky’s hair to draw him up and absorb his own taste from the lining of Bucky’s mouth. “That’s all the matters.”

*

They come together again. 

And again. 

And again. 

And again. 

It's everything. It's more than everything, in the impossible way they've got about them. 

*

Steve woke briefly sometime right before dawn as Bucky slipped one of his legs between both of Steve's and burrowed further into Steve's shoulder. They had always slept with Steve pulled close to Bucky’s chest or, in the war, they sometimes switched it up and had it so it was Steve with his arms circled tight around Bucky. With a look, they came to a silent, mutual agreement to stay facing one another, noses brushing, chests aligned, legs tangled in a warm heap of limbs. 

"Still with me?" Bucky mumbled against his neck, still half-asleep. 

"You're stuck with me." 

Bucky curled himself tighter against Steve's chest, bionic hand spanning Steve's ribs, the other curled between their chests. He'd been under the impression, just mere days ago, that he'd never get granted the privilege to feel Bucky against him, to have the smell of their skin intermingling in their shared bed again. He was so glad to be wrong. "Face like yours?" Bucky lifted his head and Steve couldn't help the little snort that shot out his nose at the way his hair was sticking up in a hundred different directions. "Your mind? I think I'll be alright." 

His face hurt from smiling so much. It was the good sort of pain.

*

Somewhere on the floor, there was a  _ping_ _!_ as a text message came through on Bucky's phone and Bucky groaned quietly as he moved both out of the circle of Steve's arms and the warmth of the sheets. The cool air of the room rushed in and Steve shuddered, watching Bucky rummage through his dress pants, wrinkled to shit and in a heap at the foot of the bed. The two minute notification lit up the screen, prompting a laugh to be punched right out of Bucky's chest. 

"What?" Steve asked. He touched at the side of his face as he pushed himself upright, fingers dancing along the slight indention along his cheek and temple from the wrinkles in the pillowcase. 

Bucky showed Steve the screen, the text, and soon Steve was laughing, too. 

It read:  _ **please for the love of god don't forget to hydrate!!! and watch your heart rate!! senior citizens need to take it easy while participating in vigorous physical activities!!!!!!**_ Another text came in just as Bucky was making to reply.  _ **AND BY VIGOROUS PHYSICAL ACTIVITIES I MEAN SHUFFLEBOARD.**_ Bucky snorted, slipping back into Steve's arms and hitching a leg up Steve's thigh to complete the line of warmth they formed against each other once more.  _  
_

Steve ran his hand down Bucky’s back, smiling against his hairline when Bucky curled in closer, thumbing out a response with his bionic thumb. "Tony is an interesting character." 

A snort shot out of Bucky's nose, followed by a nod of agreement. "I've known that kid since he came up to my knees. Holy shit, Steve, I'm so proud of him. He can come off as abrasive and he's got an ego the size of the state of Texas, but he's got a bigger heart than anyone I've ever met. He's practically on the level of Einstein and I think things are finally falling into place for him; he'd be the first to admit that Pepper's the best thing to ever happen to him, but she's helped grow so much." Bucky stopped talking, flicking his eyes up to Steve. "Fuck, I'm rambling, aren't I?"  

It was endearing, Bucky's stream of consciousness. Steve told him so, adding: “Look at you, Mama-Bear Barnes," Steve teased, huffing when Bucky flicked him in the side. "It sounds like you adopted him.”

Bucky shook his head, swirling invisible patterns on the skin of Steve's belly with light strokes of his fingertips. “If anything, he adopted me.” He licked his lips, breathing out slowly against Steve’s collarbone. “Having Tony around kept me from doing a lot of stupid shit. He’s been through so much, with parents like his, and I… I tried my damndest to keep from letting him down. Peggy and her husband— I wish you could have met Daniel, he was a great guy, worshiped the group Peg walked on and she was just as gone on him, if you can believe it— did a lot of the heavy lifting, and so did Howard's butler, Jarvis. I filled in the gaps where I could. I guess, the thing that drove he and I together was the fact that I didn't seem to get older while everyone around him did." 

"You were a source of stability for him," Steve realized. "Because every time you saw him, you hadn't changed." 

"Yeah," he said quietly, though Steve couldn't miss the fondness in his tone. It was the same voice Buck had once used when his youngest sister was born, when Becca had done something particularly endearing. "Then the little shit went and got me attached to him." 

 _I'm so glad he wasn't alone_ , Steve thought, looking down the same time Bucky tilted his chin up to catch their lips in a sweet kiss.  _I'm so glad he had people who loved him. I'm so glad he managed to love those people back._ "He kept asking if I was alright. Said he had a friend who might be concerned for my health— he even arranged to have the suit I wore last night made and sent to my apartment." 

"Thatta boy," Bucky murmured, scooting up so he could comfortably tip his temple in against Steve's, their legs overlapping, hands finding patches of skin to touch. "Fuck, it's after eleven. The others will be biting at the bit to stick their noses in our business." 

Honestly the thought of leaving this bed, of facing anyone but Bucky right now made a slight grimace rise to Steve's features. Bucky smoothed out a deep line that crinkled up Steve's forehead, smiling, ever warm and fond."The others...?" 

"Romanoff, for one," was the response Steve got in return. "Barton'll wanna know, too, and of course these texts from Tony are just the start. I honestly should have never replied because if he knows I'm awake, he'll send in one of his robots to check on us. Diana's much more subtle...  _and_ knows the art of patience. She's probably the only one I think that could hold off if we really did shack up here for a month." 

He wanted to say _I just got you back_ and _I don’t want to let you go just yet,_ but Steve raised a hand to cup the side of Bucky’s face, looking into those equally ancient and ageless eyes as he said: “The sooner we see them, the sooner we can—how did you put it? Shack up here for a month?”

Bucky kissed him—and Steve knew that he’d be pinching himself for a few more days even though the heat of Bucky and the words that left him and each instance from the evening before was as real as the aliens he’d helped defeat all of forty-eight hours previous.

“How about two months, since we’re heading out so early?”

“Mmm… I’d have to go with six.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Rogers,” Bucky said, kicking off the covers and rolling to his feet, reaching behind him for Steve’s hand, smiling when he found Steve already reaching back. “But I’ll have to raise the stakes to a year.”

“S’not so bad,” Steve agreed amiably, following Bucky into the en suite. “Not a bad plan at all.”

*

They finally manage to pull themselves together around midday, showering and poking around the closet space. Thanks to Tony's exceedingly thorough nature, it wasn't much of a surprise to Bucky that there were clothes in both his and Steve's size ready for them to wear, price tags ripped off because, according to a little sticky note that Tony had pinned to one of Steve's shirts " _He just got defrosted; I don't want to give him to die by seeing how wild inflation is"_. Bucky did up the buttons of Steve's plaid shirt, smoothing out the shoulders and letting his palms flatten over his chest. 

"Do you even _like_ these clothes?”

Steve gave a little shrug. “They’re nicer than anything I had before the war.”

Bucky cocked an eyebrow, watching a flush color Steve’s neck and ears. “That’s not an answer, doll.”

“SHIELD kind of just… Gave me an assortment of clothing similar to these,” Steve admitted, scratching lightly at the back of his neck. “I, uh, didn’t really care at the time?”

He only just held back the soft _oh, Steve_ that was up against the backs of his teeth and, instead, pulled Steve in by the nape, fingers curling into the soft hair there. Bucky would never tire of kissing Steve, of feeling his lips pressed against Bucky’s of hearing the soft noises Steve made when Bucky’s tongue met his. They didn’t go that far, though, as Bucky (yet again) felt his phone vibrate in his back pocket.

“When we get some time, do you want me to go with you to pick out some things you’ll actually like?”

Steve nodded, pecking Bucky on the end of his nose. He was so beautiful when he smiled all soft and dopey like that, lashes too long and golden for his own good. “I’d like that.”

(Bucky liked the various images of Steve in a pair of skin-tight skinny jeans that swam up to the forefront of his mind. Yes. Bucky liked that a great deal.)

They headed up to the common floor, which was two floors below the one they’d been occupying, to find Tony lounging across the couch with his nose buried in one of his Stark tablets. At the sound of the elevators pinging open, he threw the device away and sprang to his feet, shoving his hands into his pockets.

Tony didn’t even get the chance to say anything before Bucky was striding up to him and gathering him in a tight hug. “Thank you, Junior,” he murmured, pressing a hard kiss to the side of Tony’s head as Tony circled his arms around Bucky and returned the embrace just as firmly. “ _Thank you_.”

“You’re fucking glowing,” Tony said, slightly awed, so soft only he and Bucky could hear. “Like, your arm already does wonders at catching the light, but _damn._ You’ve de-aged decades. You could be my kid for how young you look right now.”

He didn’t say anything to that, but pulled back to look Tony properly in the face. Bucky squeezed the roll of his shoulder gently, unable to keep from wondering: “Are you okay, though? In all this craziness, I never got to ask how you were after the fight the other day.”

Tony waved him down, flashing one of his smiles that he threw up for the cameras, not the genuine grin that Bucky knew and worked hard to keep in place as much as possible. “I’m fine. You’ve got your man and I’ve got this building to spruce up as the Avenger’s headquarters, which you’re invited to stay in by the way.” Tony peered around Bucky at Steve. “That invite applies to the both of you. Banner’s already accepted.”

Though Bucky wasn’t fooled for a minute that there was more to the façade Tony was putting up for his and knew that in the coming days he would get Jarvis to set up a video timeline of news footage from the fight, he understood what Tony was doing in trying not to step into their limelight, of sorts. That didn’t stop Bucky from looking sternly at Tony, eyes and voice soft. “We’re going to talk about the invasion eventually.”

“Eventually,” Tony agreed lightly, clapping Bucky on the shoulder and steering them both in Steve’s direction.

“I’ll get back to you on that the moment Bucky and I get the time to actually discuss where we’ll be living,” Steve said, meeting them halfway and extending a hand to shake Tony's. 

(Tony's hand clenched hard around Steve's, something happening via micro-expressions on Tony's face. It was all in the way that Tony angled himself slightly in front of Bucky, his jaw going tight around the hinge. Bucky would learn from Steve, several hours later, that— "I felt like I was picking you up for our first date and he was your father that would put me somewhere where the sun doesn't shine if I so much as  _considered_ being rude to you." Bucky would smile for a long while at that, would call Tony up. 

"The shovel talk?  _Really_? I should say shovel _look_..." 

He could practically hear the shrug in Tony's voice. "Romanoff said she's got a plan to do the same. I bet she'll be using guns. And an actual shovel." 

Bucky didn't bother preaching how unnecessary that was, because he was too touched by the fact they cared enough to do such a thing.)

"Pepper's gonna be in the city this afternoon," Tony said, squeezing Steve's hand a final time before letting it drop, nodding like he was satisfied with whatever he was searching for. "She'd really like for you to join us for dinner." 

Steve looked to Bucky the same time he made to catch Steve's eye. They smiled, small and secret at each other. "That sounds like a plan." 

"Sir," came Jarvis's voice from the ceiling and the walls around them. "Miss Prince is coming up from the lobby." 

Tony made an affronted noise, rounding back to the couch to tap something out on his tablet before throwing it unceremoniously away again. "How long has she been down there?" 

"Security footage shows she's been nursing the same cup of coffee since just after seven at the cafe across the street." 

Sucking his teeth, Tony muttered something about how she could have just come up and waited for a couple of geneatric super-soldiers to emerge from their love nest with him and his  _perfectly awesome coffee maker thank you very much._ Bucky snorted at him, finding the muscles in his mouth were incapable from turning down. He wondered how long it would be until he could stop smiling; he hoped the feeling decided to stick around. 

He held out his right hand and let his fingers glide over the warm skin of Steve's left palm, fingertips skating down and around Steve's knuckles until he could link their fingers. Steve gave him a look, one of those lined with what seemed to scream _what the hell are you doing? We're in public and it's not safe to act like we're one-hundred and ten percent in love_. Bucky simply cradled those precious digits with his, mouthing, "Times have changed, _"_ which made the tension in Steve's face drain, as though it had never been there in the first place. 

They turned, Tony the quickest, at the sound of the elevator doors parting.  

Diana stepped off with her sleek leather bag hanging from the crook of her elbow, high heels clicking against the granite tile. She wore a cerulean blue dress that clung to her body and halted around the knee, the neckline a steep V-cut, her hair neatly pinned into an intricate knot at the base of her skull. Glittering gold earrings caught the light as she joined them, a necklace of similar design shining around her throat. 

“Lady Di,” Tony bowed lowly in greeting, popping up with a huge grin. “Always a pleasure to see you.”

Diana’s mouth curved into a fond little smile that never lost its size as she dipped in to press a kiss to his cheek. “That nickname, however respectable, got old in the nineteen nineties, Anthony.” She flicked her eyes to he and Steve and her smile grew softer. "By Hera, you both are—"

"Sickeningly sweet? Worthy of causing heart-burn? They've been here for five minutes, Princess, I don't know how much more I can take of all the  _cute_." 

"I'm sure, somehow, you'll manage to get through," Diana deadpanned, giving the most graceful eye-roll Bucky had ever seen in his life. And he thought, surrounded by the people he loved the most, knowing he'd be making a trip out to Red Hook in the coming weeks, then down to DC to see Peg, that it had been a long time coming, that things just might be alright. He had Steve back, whole and miraculously breathing, still packed with all the love Bucky believed he'd never lay eyes on again. 

This was how it was supposed to be. 

“Diana,” Bucky said, feeling his eyes grow sensitive and red around the edges as his mouth broke into a huge, blinding grin. He squeezed Steve’s hand. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. This chapter became a monster and by monster I mean longer than any of my one-shots and over 20k words. I'm so sorry about the long wait. Applying to college and the piles upon piles of things occurring in my personal life have slowed me down and I only got this done due to having been sick yesterday. Thank you all so much for sticking with me through this, seriously. It means so, so much. Also, next up is the epilogue! Comment what you think of the reunion and what you might like to see in the next chapter!!!


	7. Aeneas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Through it all, Diana was nothing but supportive. She and Steve, though Bucky wasn’t the least bit surprised given their similar natures, got along like a house on fire. Steve accompanied her to art galleries across the map, eager to catch up on what he’d missed and to become knowledgeable in the things he’d never gotten the chance to see previously. They’d always come back chatting too quick for anyone else to make sense of them, leaving Bucky the sole interpreter, immeasurably endeared by the two people he held closest to his heart. Whenever she was in the city, Diana always made arrangements at the Tower to play what Tony liked to call Ultimate Frisbee—in essence, Steve and Diana broke out their shields and performed tricks by chasing after their offensive weapons, kicking off walls, flipping through the air with a grace too powerful to name. The three of them had lunch together at least twice a month, without fail.
> 
> Still, Bucky couldn’t miss the wistful glint in Diana’s eyes even as she offered them the brightest beam in the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys, I am so, so, sorry it's been so long since the last update. It was my final year of high school and I am enrolled in an obscene number of Honors/Dual Enrollment/AP courses. I graduated in mid-June and have been dealing with college-related things sicne. Soon, I'll be off to (officially!!!!) start my path in Creative Writing! This piece has been so much fun to do. I can't say this is the last work in the Odyssey-verse you'll be getting from me, especially what with the fantastic piece of cinema that is Wonder Woman having wrecked me and made me whole again all at once. 
> 
> Another note- I am a dirty liar. You'll see why. ;)
> 
> THANKS FOR 500+ KUDOS!!! ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤ I LOVE YOU ALL!!!!!!! 
> 
> E N J O Y!

_2017._

_*_

Dawn broke over the Brooklyn skyline in a press of soft pinks and blues, russet sluiced through the middle as the sun shook off the blanket of the evening to expose itself for the day. Bucky clenched his eyes shut as he felt his body come online far too quickly for his liking—he might have groaned, _too early, too early, too early_ if it wasn’t for Steve’s steady breathing just at his ear.

He didn’t think he’d shake the shock of it, getting to wake up with Steve every single day, of just how much it _healed_ for Steve’s face to be the last thing Bucky saw before sleep claimed him, for it to be the first thing cradled and cherished first thing in the morning. Bucky no longer had to strain to recall what Steve smelled like or had to push through the haze of time to recall the sound of his voice, just how warm the feeling of his palms spread wide on Bucky’s hips sent Bucky’s smile going large and lazy, fast as anything. Because he was right _there_ , right back at Bucky’s side, where he belonged.

Where he’d been sorely missed for the better part of a century.

He risked pealing back an eyelid, found Steve’s blond hair sticking up in a thousand, spectacular directions, his lips slightly parted in deep sleep. Bucky had about a hundred photos in his phone of similar stances, because he’d gone so damn long without these seemingly mundane moments and he’s since learned to treat every last one of them like the precious gemstones they really are. Bucky brushed his fingers over Steve’s jaw, lightly tracing until— 

“Hi,” Steve mumbled, never even bothering to crack open an eye.

Bucky hummed, never pitching his voice higher than a murmur. “Hey, yourself, doll.”

“Wha’ time’s it?”

“Early,” he countered, letting his fingertips trail down to settle at Steve’s side, flexing tenderly into the muscle just above his pelvis. “I haven’t actually looked at a clock.”

(He didn’t much care about time, these days—Bucky had been so stuck on making up for lost time that when he came to the conclusion he didn’t have to rush, didn’t have to hurry, he found dragging his feet quite the admirable pastime, especially with Steve doing the same beside him.)

“Mmm.”

A light squeeze at Steve’s hip. “I don’t think I’ll be able to go back to sleep,” Bucky whispered. “Want me to go out and grab breakfast?”

An easy shrug on Steve’s part, which caused Bucky’s heart to swell with fondness at the way Steve smushed his face deeper into the pillow, making small smacking sounds just as he did when they were teenagers crowded into a twin bed while Sarah Rogers was at work. “’F you’d like.”

“Okay, then, lazy bones,” Bucky pushed himself up into a sitting position, smiling all the wider when Steve batted a heavy hand around trying to take hold of his arm and haul him back into the nest of warmth they’d created. “I’ll be back before you really wake up, alright?”

There was an intelligible noise from the mound of blankets that Bucky took to mean _hurry back._

His face was practically splitting in two by the time he’d pulled on jeans and a red Henley, doing up his boots and shrugging on a black leather coat to brace against the last chill of winter—a warm front was supposed to be moving in by the end of the week, anyway. Bucky smiled so much, so easily, these days and not even Tony had the gall to poke fun at him for it, as they could all recall a time when Bucky rarely had any expression at all.

Sitting down on Steve’s side of the bed long enough to brush the fringe of bangs from Steve’s forehead and kiss the skin he’d just revealed, Bucky said: “Love you, Stevie.”

That had Steve’s eyes fluttering, had him looking up all dopey and sweet at Bucky, one foot still in the realm of sleep. “Love you, too, sweetheart.” He strained up to catch Bucky’s mouth with his own, lips curling delightedly when Bucky bumped their noses together and parted their mouths briefly; even with the staleness of morning breath, Steve was a welcome taste on his tongue and if the little noises Steve made in the back of his throat were any indication, the feeling was entirely mutual.

With a final peck, one that said _hold that thought,_ Bucky snagged his phone, wallet and house key off their bedside table and headed downstairs to move out into the morning.

About seven blocks from their Brooklyn brownstone, there’s a deli that sells really fantastic bacon, egg and cheese croissants for a reasonable price.  It is also the home to, quite possibly in Bucky’s _totally_ unbiased opinion, the greatest apple tart in the history of man. While it might not have the sentimental value of Sarah Roger’s edible creation of the same brand, it was almost as good. Almost, as in it was a passable imitation in this day and age where there’s been a change to so many ingredient types (see _the great banana fall out of 2011_ ).  Bucky’s lived through all the changes—Steve woke up with them all staring him down, expecting him to immediately adapt and bend to their will.

Bucky didn’t allow that. Steve was a very fast learner: anything he struggled with, Bucky was at his side to assist in an instant if asked. It helped, too, that Tony was more than willing to lend his resources when needed and that Tony and Nat were basically geniuses in the technology department—they were more than eager to teach Steve anything he might wish to learn, both the legal and the not-so-legal.

But over the course of six years, Steve and Bucky managed to fall back together as seamlessly as it could be hoped. He didn’t think he’d ever forget the look of shock that crossed Steve’s face when Bucky reached out and took his hand on a public street in Manhattan, nothing to hide them as it was the middle of the day and the street was milling with tourists and natives alike.

He’d never forget the raw _relief_ that bled through his features when Bucky said: “We don’t have to hide anymore. I can hold you or touch you or kiss you right now and no one could do anything about it.”

It was the little things that stunned Bucky the most, in the start. Like waking up in the same bed or reading the paper at breakfast and feeling Steve’s cold toes settle over his under the table; like watching the latest political news coverage and them both blurting out the same insult at the same time at the absolute bigoted clusterfuck that was the current President; like hearing Steve’s tone deaf ass singing in Frank Sinatra in the shower, swearing loudly when a shampoo bottle is dropped or the soap is fumbled. He had lived in a dry spell for so long, living off memory alone and, as he so frequently thought, to have Steve _back_?

It was everything. It always would be.  

Through it all, Diana was nothing but supportive. She and Steve, though Bucky wasn’t the least bit surprised given their similar natures, got along like a house on fire. Steve accompanied her to art galleries across the map, eager to catch up on what he’d missed and to become knowledgeable in the things he’d never gotten the chance to see previously. They’d always come back chatting too quick for anyone else to make sense of them, leaving Bucky the sole interpreter, immeasurably endeared by the two people he held closest to his heart. Whenever she was in the city, Diana always made arrangements at the Tower to play what Tony liked to call Ultimate Frisbee—in essence, Steve and Diana broke out their shields and performed tricks by chasing after their offensive weapons, kicking off walls, flipping through the air with a grace too powerful to name. The three of them had lunch together at least twice a month, without fail.

Still, Bucky couldn’t miss the wistful glint in Diana’s eyes even as she offered them the brightest beam in the room.

In the lull of the late afternoons, where things seemed to stretch without end and his thoughts cleared a little more than any other time of day, Bucky often mulled over how unfair it was—that he’d gotten his Steve back and Diana hadn’t. This was the love of his life, miraculously returned to him, and the woman who had stood by as his friend, confident, sister and a dozen more epithets that fit the labels of all the shattered bits that Diana had picked up and loyally held together, did not have the same opportunity to reap the reward he had.

And see, the thing is, Diana’s life did not go on hold when Steve Trevor died. Bucky had seen proof of that in Diana fighting the good fight during his war, after she’d lost so much in hers. She had marched in just as many protest movements as he had, but she was far braver—she went onto the fronts of more wars than he could count while he stayed safely behind his typewriter, too afraid if he dove into the heart of another fight, he’d lose himself and not walk out the other side.

Diana was fearless. Her weakness, the only one Bucky believed her to have, was her inability to give up—she would fight to the death if need be, she would never stop, never give in, so long as anyone was in need of defending. Of course, she had managed to carve out a place in the world both as the figure media dubbed _Wonder Woman_ and as socialite Diana Prince, who had a great love for the restoration of historical pieces.

She thrived in Paris, where she split her time with New York. He’d visited more than once, dropping in without notifying her, and had watched from the doorway for all of twelve seconds before she would slant that crooked grin of hers his way and say: “I know you’re there, James—quit being so anti-social” as she leaned over a piece of pottery, something amazingly preserved in its structure and hue, just watching the determination in her eyes as she cataloged the item.

The point was that she deserved it. Out of everyone on this rock hurtling through space, Diana, Princess of Themyscira, was worthy of having her love returned. He’d do anything for her to have the same chance as he did, only—and he _had_ strained himself with turning over all the ways that this fantasy could gain the tangibility to become a bona fide reality— Bucky came up short every time. Not even T’Challa had developed time travel technology, even if one of the men on Diana’s own team dabbled with timelines. She’d not approve, not if there was a chance other people would be at risk of injury.   

He could practically hear her voice in his head, saying, very adamant, "Steve would not want that, not if it led to his sacrifice being made in vain." 

Shaking himself, Bucky _sighed_ when he stepped on a wad of gum. The chill of the morning had settled into his cheeks, making his mouth a bit dry and his eyes damp from the occasional sharp gust of wind.

He was a block away from the deli when Bucky heard the sharp, unmistakable sound of a metal trashcan toppling over, followed by the lighter noise of the tin lid rolling, rolling, rolling, and falling over onto its side. It sent him pausing for all of a beat before Bucky hurried his pace and rounded the corner, flattening a hand on the weather-smoothed brick wall.

(Bucky had learned to expect the worst when stumbling into a dank alleyway, but he had to admit that he’d found Steve and Clint in such a manner and really shouldn’t have been surprised in the least at how things turned out.)

A woman, tall and thin and sporting a shock of dark red hair tied back with a silk scarf to neatly tumble down her shoulders stood before him. She was olive skinned with regal cheekbones and her mouth painted a delicate baby pink. Her dress, green as emeralds and printed with lilies, fluttered around her calves as she turned and spotted him.  

“Oh,” she said, cocking her head. Bucky couldn’t miss the disappointed note in her voice nor the faint accent—something Greek. “I was expecting Diana. She is typically in the city around this time of year, no?” 

Bucky blinked. _So much for getting back before Steve wakes up,_ was the first thing he bit back, quickly followed by _she looks like she’s dressed for spring._ “Yeah,” he said slowly, slipping his right hand in his pocket and activating his home screen. His thumb loitered over the emergency call button, where Steve’s contact was at the very top. “She got held up due to this find in Athens, something as far back as the Trojan War. Do… do you know each other?”

She laughed, a bright, sunburst of a thing. He was immediately warmed by it. He didn’t let that completely disarm him, though. “Not directly,” she said. “You see, we are sisters—we share a father.” And, as though she could sense that he was already filing through his pool of knowledge concerning Greek gods and goddesses, the deity before him put Bucky out of his misery by adding: “I am Persephone.”

Diana had given him mythology lessons, many years previous, and he vaguely recalled that Persephone was the goddess of fertility and spring. It was only by the grace of some unseen being pulling his strings that Bucky’s hand fell out of his pocket, that he managed to say: “You did a wonderful job with the cherry blossoms in DC. My friend, Peggy, adores them.”

“Thank you,” she grinned with a smile as bright as the morning sun, her fingers straying to the ends of her hair. “It is always rewarding to see that my work brings joy.”

Persephone, who Bucky remembered more clearly now that he had a name to go on, was the Queen of the Underworld, wife of Hades, and, as pointed out, the daughter of Zeus. Her mother was someone who packed so much power that she brought about the first winter and a huge famine due to the frozen earth making any crop of the time impossible to flourish. Bucky knew better than to underestimate Persephone’s slender frame—she was about Diana’s size and Diana could, quite literally, kill him in under a second in about three hundred different ways if she so chose. Even then, Di was a demigod of the new age.

This was a god of old with more years piled on her shoulders than even anything out of the Torah, than anything that could be found in _any_ of the religious sects that dominated the world today. He tried to keep the tension out of his posture and his words. If she was looking for Diana and hadn’t immediately tried to smite him for the mix-up, she couldn’t be so terrible.

“May I ask…,” Bucky began, searching for the right way to phrase his inquiry.

For his hesitation, he had a hand flapped at him, couldn’t help but notice her nail polish was the same pink as her lipstick. “You can speak freely,” Persephone assured him. “I’m not going to strike you down with a bolt of lightning, if that is what you’re so concerned with.”

Bucky nodded. “Thank you,” he said, offering her a polite smile that she returned. Her eyes were almond shaped and brown, almost the same color as Diana’s. They made him think of soil, of things that grew and grew and grew. Of life. “Diana told me that all the Gods are dead.”

“Oh most of them are,” Persephone claimed, flippant, once again reminding Bucky she’d had literal ages to become adjusted to this fact. “My husband and I were in the Underworld when the great battle took place—so now everyone from Apollo to Aphrodite is down there being a bother for all eternity.”

Huh.  He’d have to tell Diana—she had more family she wasn’t aware of, that there was someone on her level she might have a chance of meeting and befriending.  For now, though: “What exactly were you searching Diana out for?”

Persephone lifted one of her hands from where they’d remained at her sides previously. She curled her fingers so the entirety of her palm was hidden, tipped her head to the left, to the right, then smiled as she let her fingers unfurl to reveal a rose, blood red and larger than anything he’d ever seen sold in a flower shop. “Because of love.”

He couldn’t help but blink.

Persephone laughed and it was not a cruel sound as he thought it might have been. Her eyes hadn’t left the rose. “Contrary to what legends say,” she murmured, the scent of hyacinth billowing down the alley and wrapping uncomfortably around the rungs of Bucky’s ribs. If he hadn’t spent so long learning Diana’s micro-expressions, he’d have completely missed the utter sorrow in this goddess’s features. “My views of love are that it can heal just as easily as it can shatter. I love my husband. I went to him willingly—he did not take me or rape me or do anything that I did not consent to him doing. Man warped our love, made it out to be something _forced_ and wrapped in barbs.”

Bucky drudged up a smile for her, something he might have gave Becca the first time she had her heart broken by a boy. “I’ll take your truth from here today and I’ll pass it along. Maybe, in time, the story will be corrected.”

Persephone lifted her head to beam at him. Before his very eyes, the rose curled back into itself and vanished as she touched at her heart and Bucky felt his head spin as the sweetness of lilac smothered out any scent of garbage left out in the sun. She was, after all, the bringer of spring: to have a dozen flower shop’s worth of smells charge forth depending on her mood shouldn’t have surprised him in the least. Even Diana was prone to producing small fits of electricity when she was angry so if he touched her arm or her wrist, he got a bit of a shock from it.

“Would you?” she said, on the end of a soft sigh. “I see why Diana has kept you close—you’re as kind as you are handsome.” With a little wink, Persephone stepped forward. “I was going to keep her gift until I could present it to her in person, but I see you are worthy of its deliverance.”

He did not ask what the gift was, did not prompt as to why Persephone didn’t just poof off in the way she’d appeared to Diana’s location at that very moment. Bucky didn’t need to.

“As you know, Diana has given a great deal for this world. Made sacrifices and shouldered losses that only beings like Atlas have carried. I see, in your eyes, you have been allowed the chance to recover from such a pressing weight. She is a rarity among our kind in that, through all the hardships and the angst, she has managed to keep track of her moral compass and remain true to what she, in the very depths of her soul, believes in.

“I told you, young one—,” and Bucky’s mind couldn’t help but interject on that note because it was so damn refreshing to be among company that’s seen, felt, done far more than he has. “—of my view of love. Diana was broken by it, but also fueled. I came to gift her with a balm that might heal. She has, no doubt, told you of how she senses a new war on the horizon, something larger and fiercer than anything this realm has seen.”

Bucky was no stranger to this foreboding message, that there was a looming threat that no one could grasp the magnitude or the shape of, only that there must be planning to try and prevent as much destruction and loss of life as possible. It did, however, throw him a little off-kilter coming out the mouth of Persephone rather than Diana, who he was familiar with, who was soft as she was steely and could bend, bend, bend and never break.

He managed a nod. This was enough.

“Her faith in the Gods has never wavered, but she will be tested. What I give today? It is meant to encourage her to fight harder as much as it is to serve as an incentive to be safe. This is a gift that has, rest assured, been agreed to on both ends.”

Before he could ask what she meant by _that_ , Persephone shot him a grin. “You, too, are in my favor, James Barnes.”

There was a great burst of daisies, a flurry of white and gold petals with a light scent that could have been missed had it not been for his enhanced senses. She had vanished, just as the rose did, as quick as anything. It was not as simple as that, though. It never was.

And Bucky just _stared._

Because in Persephone’s place, Steve Trevor lay curled on his side, eyes closed and wearing garb straight out of the early twentieth century, clothes of which he surely died in.

Yeah, there was no way in hell he was going to make it back before Steve woke up for the day.

*

He carefully rewound through the last ten minutes and one particular thought was dominant among the whirlwind of many: _ask and ye shall receive, apparently._

*

After the initial panic of _Steve Trevor has been dead for almost a century, killed by_ definitely _sacrificing himself for all the tomorrows that lay ahead, and yet he’s lying at Bucky’s feet after having been deposited there like an order from Amazon Prime by an actual goddess that_ wasn’t _Diana,_ Bucky was very quick in getting Tony to send a medical evacuation van the Avengers kept on hand in case of emergency.

After the panic came slight reluctance. “You doubt it’s him?” Steve asked quietly, having gotten to the Tower as soon as Bucky called. They stood close, barely an inch of space between them. “You think that the goddess might have been trying to pull some sort of trick?”

“No. _No,_ ” he repeated the word more for his own sake than Steve’s, shaking his head. Tony and Dr. Banner went through the laundry list of tests that had been deemed necessary to perform just beyond the glass: full body scans to assess injury, to determine the strength of life signs, and whether or not there was some sort of frequency that might suggest magical tampering or a temporariness that would take Steve Trevor back to where he’d been since he’d last walked this earth too soon. “This isn’t Loki—I’m not even completely sure if there is a trickster god among the Greeks. Persephone made a promise and if she’s anything like Diana when it comes to promises, it’ll hold true.”

He had to believe that.  

Steve reached out to slide their fingers together, his touch immediately serving to calm the nervous pounding of Bucky’s heart. “You’re worried for Diana, aren’t you?”

 “Of course I am,” he said, half-exasperation, half-anxious. “I feel like I’m betraying her by having not called already. But I don’t want to give her false hope if his heart’s going to give out right after she walks in.” Bucky let his forehead tip onto Steve’s shoulder, shuddering at the brush of Steve’s mouth against his crown. “Only I feel like I’m betraying her all over again if he _does_ have an immediate expiration date by not giving her the opportunity to see him one last time.”

Right on cue, Tony waved both his arms to catch their attention—he gave them a huge grin and a thumbs up.

“Oh thank God,” Bucky breathed, practically deflating like a popped balloon. He felt as if he’d been pumped to the bursting with nervous energy and now he needed to run all the way to Diana just to achieve a semblance of steadiness again.

“I think the respectful thing would be to ‘oh thank _Gods’_ ,” Steve countered on a relieved laugh. “Given the circumstances and all.”

“Har har, Captain Comedy. This is going to be hard for more reasons than one, you know” Bucky claimed, pulling Steve tighter against his side, curling closer when he felt an arm settle around his middle, flatten along his ribs. “I mean, there’s _two_ Steve’s now. And we can’t differentiate between your by hair color because you’re both blond and we can’t do eye color, either, because you’ve both got baby blues. Can’t even call you _Noble_ Steve because you both crashed planes to save the world—”

“Last names'll work fine,” Steve muttered good-naturedly. “Now go and call Diana.”

*

Bucky moved to a quiet nook where there was no beeping of machines or any living thing besides himself to be found. He held his phone in his metal hand because he knew his right one would shake as he thumbed into his contacts and pressed the call button for Diana.

She must not have been too busy as she picked up on the third ring.

“Hello, James,” Diana said warmly and Bucky couldn’t help the gooseflesh that rose on his arm. “How are you? Did you ever get Anthony to sleep or is he still rattling away in his laboratory? I’ve told him a countless number of times that renewable energy isn’t going to advance any if he spares a few hours to rest.”

He closed his eyes. She was It would be best to skip any and all sort of pleasantries—in the long run, she would be grateful for it. “Di, listen. Something’s come up.”

Bucky could actually _feel_ the cordiality shatter down the line, could detect the scrape of chair legs on hard wood as she stood fluidly. “You’re still in New York, yes? I just got back to my apartment in Paris and I can be there in an hour.”

He found himself almost overwhelmed with love for her, right then—her limitless kindness, how, though he knew she must be exhausted from her trip, she was willing to travel across the world at the first sign he might need her. Bucky had Peg, Daniel, Tony, Becca, and countless others, but none of them really quite _got_ him the way Diana did from the very beginning. They’d lost their Steve’s, have grieved them, and now, now Diana was getting hers _back._

“Steve Trevor is alive,” Bucky said, wishing the words had fallen from his lips fast like hornets and hadn’t left him slowly, oh so slowly—sap leaking from the belly of a tree.

If he hadn’t been searching for it, Bucky never would have picked up the soft hitch in her breathing.

“How?” she whispered. “I saw it happen, James. I _felt_ it. It’s not possible.”

“It is,” he pressed. “Persephone brought him back for you. Her and Hades escaped the fight way back when and they’ve been playing host to the other gods down in the Underworld. According to her, it was a two-sided deal—meaning she wanted to bring him up here and he was more than willing to make the trip.”

It was a double-edged sword—he could practically hear Diana’s heart breaking and mending on the rocky shores of disbelief. He’d seen her in states of upset before, but nothing like this. It had been on the upper side of thirty years since she’d lost her Steve when Bucky first lost his: he’d felt selfishly glad for her empathy, then, but the hurt was an old wound, something she’d nursed and kept carefully bandaged over time.

Her sutures were coming lose. Blood welled to the surface, flowed freely.

“Why?” Diana prompted, hollow and short. “Why now? Why not immediately after my slaying of Ares, hmm? Why not when my faith was at its lowest during the liberation of the concentration camps or during any of the other mass genocides man launched forth?” She was practically panting, her voice getting more watery and shaking with each word that broke from between her lips, her accent thicker. A great heaving breath pierced at his ear drum, shooting down to twist at his heart.

“Breathe,” Bucky soothed, halting his pacing and coming to a stop in front of one of many lines of windows. He planted his flesh hand on the glass, let the contrast between the heat of his skin and the coolness of the two-inch thick windowpane ground him. “Di, _breathe._ She said it was because of what you’ve done for this world, because you’ve lost and lost and lost and you deserved to gain something of value.”

She spared a moment to digest this, rolling it around in her head and allowing it to settle. “Is he alright?” Diana asked, wading into her pool of a multitude of questions; Bucky recalled the day he’d learned Steve survived the ice, how he’d been up and about in New York and no one had dared to tell Bucky, how he’d nearly drowned in worry. She didn’t deserve to be smothered with such a feeling, but knew any effort he put forth would be futile—Diana, after all, had the biggest heart of anyone he’d ever met and would fret no matter what Bucky told her.

That did not mean he was going to put forth a half-assed effort, though. “Tony and Dr. Banner ran several tests and gave him a clean bill of health. As far as I saw, he was in peak physical condition—no scarring or anything in that field. He was still sleeping when I checked all of five minutes ago, but he’s whole and he’s healthy, Diana.”

“Good,” she said. What she did not have to say: _if it wasn’t me who found him, I’m glad it was you_ and _tell Anthony thank you for extending his resources_ as well as _I’ve pinched myself nearly half a dozen times just to prove I’m not dreaming. I will not truly believe it until I’m there at his side, where I was meant to be all along._ In the background, there was the sudden rush of air, as though Diana had moved to a high, open point. “You’re at Avengers Tower, yes?”

He gave a hum of confirmation.

“I’ll be there in forty minutes,” she said.

“Be safe,” Bucky replied to the dead air of a call already ended. Even from across the world, he could swear he heard the sonic boom of her kicking off the earth, speeding ever closer to the man she believed she’d never get to see again.  

*

Steve Trevor woke slowly, in tiny increments of movement—the crinkle of his nose, the furrow of his brow, the little smack of his mouth he gave before he went completely still and his eyes snapped open, as though jabbed with an electrified cattle prod. “Wha—?” Trevor gasped, sitting bolt upright and trying to lunge out of the bed.

“Woah,” Bucky said, shooting forward before Trevor’s knees could give out and he broke his nose braining himself on the ground.  Diana _might_ just kill him if Trevor hurt himself on Bucky’s watch. “Take it slow, pal.”

“Who the hell are you?” Trevor asked, eyes too big and blue in his face. He held out a hand in front of his nose, first close, then pulling it away and wriggling his fingers as though working the feeling back into them. He let out a laugh, high and pleased. “It worked!”

Bucky carefully maneuvered Trevor back to the bed, stepping back a few feet as to give him the semblance of not being trapped, but standing close enough that if he tried to bolt up again with the same speed, Bucky would be there to catch if he stumbled. This man was once a spy, after all, and he would likely be on edge until Bucky started to explain. “My name is James Barnes. You’re in a medical wing in Stark Tower, Upper Manhattan. As to how you’re alive, well. That’s a little more complicated.”

Trevor cocked a challenging eyebrow, still a touch breathless from having woken up. “I know.”

“You know your part, but I can tell you’re a little weary about mine,” which was something Bucky understood down to the atomic level: after the war, after he’d been pulled off that lab table in Italy, he exerted more energy looking over his shoulder, didn’t trust people nearly as much as he might have before he’d stepped onto a ship headed for the fronts. This was a whole new ballgame for Trevor—he didn’t blame the guy a bit for the cagey set to his stance. “I think this may be easier if I just go ahead and throw my cards on the table.”

He was very sure to calculate his movements, flashing his right hand as he shifted to retrieve his phone from his back pocket. Bucky half-watched Trevor’s expression—there was bemusement and suspicion written in every line of his face— as he thumbed into his phone: he launched the application for his photo gallery and scrolled up a few rows to an image snapped a few weeks ago. It was, quite clearly, of Diana, grinning at the lens as, off-camera, Bucky made some stupid joke he couldn’t recall.

Trevor practically snatched the device out of Bucky’s hands, so quick Bucky was honestly surprised there wasn’t a cartoonish poof of smoke. “Diana,” he whispered. Trevor looked every bit of a man who had lost all hope, finally laying eyes on a precious watering hole in the midst of an endless stretch of desert. “Explain,” Trevor said, coughing once to try and shake the waver from his voice. It didn’t help. “ _Please_.”

Bucky did just that.

(When he’d gone and said his piece, Trevor leveled him with a look. He could have been a man about to eat the bullets of a firing squad for all his eyes were red rimmed and his posture was tightened with grim acceptance. “Are you and Diana together?”

It shouldn’t have surprised Bucky as much as it did. After all the stories Diana had told of him of her golden, gentle Steve, he couldn’t believe he’d forgotten all the bits where she’d called him hopelessly cynical, too. “No,” Bucky assured him, holding his gaze to ensure the words sank in on the first go. “She’s like a sister to me. I would go to the ends of the earth and back for her with zero hesitation, but my heart is with someone else.”

Trevor slumped back into the pillows, relief practically bleeding out of him in the manner of poison from a wound. He shut his eyes hard. “Well _that’s_ a relief.”)

“Your turn, pal,” Bucky said, crossing to the other side of the room for the metal water jug and a pair of cups to offer Trevor something to dampen his pallet.

“This woman—a red haired dame followed around by a three headed dog—"

“Persephone?”

“Yeah,” Trevor confirmed, nodding, pleased he didn’t have to go into as much detail as he’d believed. “She found me, said that she was related to Diana and that she could help us see each other again. I’d just been wandering around, yanno? A shade, is what Persephone called it. And she said that if I chose to return to the land of the living, I’d get all sorts of perks.”

Bucky sipped at his own cup of water as Trevor did no more than run his fingertip around the rim of his. He tried to keep his voice casual as he wondered: “Define perks.”

“She said I’d basically be a demigod, like Diana,” Trevor said, his voice lower than it had been previously, as though he was sharing a secret with Bucky he didn’t quite believe himself. He probably didn’t, likely wouldn’t until he’d been made to actually put his new skills to the test. “I’d be quick and strong, sure, but what sold me was the fact that I’d not age.” He looked up to Bucky and his smile was so bittersweet Bucky was severely tempted to throw his half-full water to the side and hug him. “I’d be able to stay with Diana forever, if she’d have me that long.”

Bucky couldn’t avoid reaching out, not with that display of emotion. He laid his hand on Trevor’s shoulder, squeezing just to the right of his collarbone.  His voice was overflowing with a confidence that Trevor seemed to drink like a man dying of thirst. “She would. I know she would.”

“It’s been almost a hundred years, though,” Trevor pressed. He tipped his face down so his bangs fell into his eyes. He did not bother to push them away, though that didn’t keep Bucky from seeing the sharp ripple of emotion that shot right through Trevor’s expression. “You can’t know that.”

“I do, though,” he said, letting the absolute surety of it sink into his very pores. “You didn’t hear her voice when I told her you were alive, you’ve never seen her face whenever your name is brought up. For so long she’s had nothing but your ghost—and now, you’re here and it seems like you won’t be going anywhere for quite some time. I bet you she won’t let you out of her sight for at least a week. _Minimum_.”

Trevor, though Bucky’s assurances only appeared to soothe him to a certain degree, did lose a great deal of the tension winding his spine into a sharp line. “You sound like you’re talking from experience, here.”

“I am,” Bucky claimed, unable to help a small smile. “But that’s a story for an entirely different day.”

Bucky trashed his empty paper cup, moving to nudge open the door to the medical bay and beckoned Trevor to follow him to the elevator before that guarded body language returned and they relapsed on what progress Bucky had made in instilling a semblance of trust between the two of them. He punched the button for a rarely used floor, a fully furnished space Tony had designed specifically for Diana.

He smiled as Trevor moved into the common area, flicking from the couch to the television to the toaster to the dishwasher to the glossy magazines stacked on the cherry wood coffee table, landing on the Manhattan skyline gleaming just beyond the floor to ceiling windows. Trevor whistled lowly in appreciation, eyes huge in his face given in the New York of Trevor’s day, the Empire State Building hadn’t even began its construction and wouldn’t for nearly two decades his post-mortem. Now, he was exposed to an industrial jungle of tall, gleaming infrastructure—a ‘post-Modernism _nightmare_ ’ according to his Steve, who quietly preferred the exposed brick and the brownstones of which they’d grown up with.

“I’m surprised at you,” Bucky said, stepping up to join him in observing the city pulsing with life at high noon.

For a man suddenly dumped into a completely new time, Trevor was amazingly steady, impressively level-headed. “What? Did you think I’d be taller?”

That shook a laugh out between Bucky’s teeth. “No, no,” he said. “I’m surprised you’ve not asked me for every detail about what Diana’s been up to in the last century.”

Trevor did nothing more than smile. “She’s alive and she’s healthy. For now, that’s good enough for me. I want to hear the rest from her.”

Bucky squeezing Trevor warmly on the ball of his shoulder just hard enough to be felt, unable to help think _this was going to be the start of a long, most-likely snark ridden friendship._ “She’ll be here soon.” Trevor’s eyes shuttered hard, his breathing going a bit ragged, as though it just sank in that he had a second chance. Bucky wouldn’t be at all surprised if that was the case.

They sank into comfortable silence, only occasionally punctuated by Trevor asking him a general question—where had Bucky met Diana? How long had they known each other? Bucky was genuinely surprised Trevor’s neck didn’t snap when he turned sharply after Bucky told him that he and Di had been friends since nineteen forty-five, that he was so young due to the experimentation of an sadistic doctor in a lab.

“Yeah,” Trevor muttered darkly. “I know all about sociopathic doctors and their attempts at destroying the world.” He left the whole _it’s because of one I blew up with that plane, that I spent so long separated from Diana._

He was going to tell Trevor that Dr. Maru had committed suicide while waiting to be tried for crimes against humanity in nineteen-nineteen, that Zola had faced a life sentence in a high-security prison and had died in a small cell with minimal light and contact with the outside world thanks to Peggy’s influence in SHIELD when—

“Sir,” FRIDAY chimed over their heads, almost hesitant in her pause. “Ms. Prince has just landed on the roof.”

For his credit, Trevor didn’t startled at the disembodied voice chiming from the ceiling. He likely believed it to be some sort of page system, a woman in dressed like the typical secretary on the other line. “Thank you, FRIDAY,” Bucky said, glancing to Trevor. “I’ll go up and grab her, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Trevor nodded. “ _Yes._ ”

Bucky gave him another squeeze on the arm, meant to encourage and to strengthen. Without another word, he turned and moved quickly to the elevator in five long strides. It was a short ride to the top of the Tower, finding Diana waiting for the lift in her red, blue and gold armor, shield on her back, sword between her shoulder blades. Bucky could not miss the way the delicate curves beneath her eyes were a bit swollen, like she’d been fighting hope on the off-chance everything collapsed before she could arrive in time.

(She and Bucky knew plenty about being late—he couldn’t blame her for arriving as though she would have to immediately launch into battle at the bat of an eyelash, just to have a minute with her beloved.)

Her mouth parted just a few millimeters as she turned those dark eyes on him. He watched her try to form the question that had no doubt been on her mind the entirety of her trip— _where is_ he? Her throat worked fiercely and he could see that she was shaking, just enough for his elevated senses to detect. Bucky wanted to reach out and hold her, to run a soothing hand down her back, but knew very well any attempt at comfort, at seemingly entrapping her, would not go well, not with so much on the line.

Ushering her inside, Bucky stayed close, but did not touch her. Diana was a live wire, quite literally bursting with energy that her flight—made in _thirty-one minutes_ —did not eliminate. FRIDAY had the lift moving without him having to press a single thing and he wasn’t sure if he imagined that the elevator moved quicker than normal or not.

Diana’s back straightened when the metal lips parted on an exhale for her to step off. She pressed her mouth into a thin line and nodded at him, once, and seemed to settle when he nodded back. “He’s just through there,” Bucky told her softly, loitering in the elevator as she moved away, not needing to be told twice.

 _What a road we had to walk to get here,_ he thought, rubbing a hand over his face with every intention of shooting upstairs, grabbing Steve, and latching onto his beloved with all he had. The doors glided closed, leaving the last bit he saw of Diana being the lasso of truth swished at her hip around the bend in the entryway. Bucky kind of wanted to cry the happiest of tears. _What a god damn road._

*

Diana found him sitting on the couch, his head cradled in his hands, feet spread out in front of him. The moment the _click-click_ of her boots hit the tile, though, his head shot up and he launched to his feet.

He was just as beautiful as her memory recalled—blue and gold and pink. The same beige cable knit sweater clung to his frame as the one she last saw him in: for that matter, he still wore those same muddied brown boots with an impractical number of ties and buckles, his trousers still dark chocolate and lose enough to allow movement. Once her appraisal of his figure was done, after she had it confirmed with her own eyes he did not sport any bullet wounds or the like, Diana landed on the apples of his cheeks, how they were flushed with life and his body, oh, his precious frame, was _whole_.

For so long, in those early days soaked in the bitterness of grief, Diana had virtually relearned how to breathe, constructing a new set of lungs, forcing oxygen through the unshakable tang of sour, burnt ashes in her mouth. And now, and now—

Steve’s mouth trembled as he broke into a smile, a blinding, toothy thing that made her own teeth hurt for how sweet it was to simply have the opportunity to stand in its vicinity. Diana had fought literal gods, creatures of another world who would have ripped her in two without any hesitation, and yet, in the face of her own greatest love and her greatest sorrow, the deepest of all wounds she’d shouldered in this world of man, Diana was frozen.

That smile faded, just a few degrees

She found herself standing mere feet away, not even a full yard, when Steve spoke to her for the first time in almost a hundred years:

“You’ve never had a problem crossing no man’s land before,” he said, soft and teasing and he was solid. Ever since Diana had settled eyes on him, she had been waiting the ax to fall, for him to fade away like smoke at the end of a cigarette butt.

“This is not a war,” Diana countered, equally soft. She swallowed. “James told me that you were given the opportunity by the Queen of the Underworld to return here.” _To return to me,_ was not said but easily understood.

Steve nodded, his bangs flopping across his forehead. His next askance was “Did he tell you that whatever Persephone did to me made my body like yours?” She didn’t even have to cock an eyebrow and ask for him to explain: he did that all on his own as she felt hope break from hibernation and shake off the frost of winter in order to spread its wings and soar in her chest. It momentarily smothered her into muteness. “I’m stronger and wiser—not completely  on your level, but she said it would be pretty damn close. And…,” he swallowed, dredging up the same courage she’d seen in his face every day they were out on the fronts. “And I won’t age. I won’t get old, Diana.”

Her eyes shuttered closed at the sound of her name coming from his tongue. In the span of seconds she kept her eyelids lowered, Steve had sealed the distance, so close she could feel his breath fan across the lower half of her face. That precious scent of gun oil, pine, and something all-together _Steve_ pressed warmly into her senses and she couldn’t keep avoiding his gaze.

“You’re like me,” Diana repeated softly. _You won’t go away again?_

His huge smile had returned—Hera only knew how Diana had gone so long without it, without him at arm’s reach. “I’m like you,” he agreed. _They’ll have to drag me, kicking and screaming._

With that, pulled right out of the air between them and clutched tightly to her heart, Diana gave up tip-toeing around Steve and dove right into the loudest thought that had been occupying her conscience ever since she’d left Paris, since James first broke the news. "I never got to reply to you," she whispered, reaching out to frame his face in her hands, brushing her thumbs over his cheekbones. _Whole, warm, whole, warm_ shot through her head in rapid succession, quickly joined by a third word— _here._ "That day on the runway.The day that everything ended. I never got to reply." 

Steve's eyes went glassy, his lower lip trembling as he held her stare. "I didn’t think you’d heard me," he said, just as soft. 

"I love you," Diana told him, raw and sure in that overwhelmingly honest way she had learned to shake away, but never forget, that made his eyes sting to see she had retained through all these years. Experience had hardened her, but Steve Trevor was, to steal a phrase from Clark, her kryptonite—she would always bend to him. "I love you with everything I have. I have never stopped. I couldn't, I never wished to. There wasn’t a day that passed where you did not enter my thoughts, rarely a night where I didn’t entertain you in my dreams." 

He stepped closer so that her elbows were pressed between her chest and his, Steve’s forehead tipping in to fall against hers. “You held onto me all that time?” he wondered on the edge of a wet laugh, hands reaching out to cradle her waist; even through her armor, she could feel the heat of his palms, the points where his precious digits were so close to making contact with her skin. Though his tone was that of jest, his eyes were wider than normal with disbelief. “Let me guess, you kept the watch, too?”

 _You wonderful, glorious, self-depreciating man,_ Diana thought, nodding her head in the affirmative. Another one of those soft noises of mirth turned sob left him. “When I was faced with my greatest challenge, you helped to restore my faith in man again—you taught me to believe when I had very little reason to. Everything I have fought for, I have done in love and that, my sweetest sorrow, stemmed from you. As for the watch, I took it with me on every one of my travels: I trusted no other time piece to work at the same caliber.”

Steve shifted the set of his arms, letting them fully slip around her middle, and tugging her flush against his front. Diana didn’t hesitate to slide her arms around his neck, one hand cradling the back of his head, the other curled protectively around his shoulder with her nose buried in the soft space between his neck and jaw. She felt his diaphragm fall and expand rapidly, had no issue in detecting the hitch to his breathing.

“I never… If I would have known I could have… I didn’t mean to leave you alone for so long,” he finally got out after a handful of starts and stops, delivering the words to the exposed skin of her shoulder, a few widths from her collarbone. “Time passed so quickly down there… it hardly felt like a month went by.”

Squeezing at his nape, Diana pulled back just enough so she could look into his face—at the large freckle low on his left cheek, at stubble lining his jaw, at his heavy brows, at those blue, blue eyes that hadn’t left some point of Diana’s person ever since she stepped into the room. There were tears on his lashes, irises darkened with grief; grief for all the days spent without the other, grief that he’d likely been harboring deep down and never quite connecting with, grief, pure and unadulterated, for _her_.

“You couldn’t have had any idea,” she murmured. “I did, after all, have your watch.”

He snorted, but it was nowhere close to being a harsh sound. “Had my heart, too.”

She beamed, watching him through hooded eyes—Diana could tell the very moment he recognized her expression from that night in Veld, those hours of warmth and adoration she kept preserved like a butterfly encased in amber, a still-life from another age. It was no surprise, then, when Diana touched at his chin and tipped his mouth to hers. The little gasp he was unable to repress sent a pleasant shudder down her spine, quickly followed by his hands rising to cup at the sides of her head, his fingertips threading through her windswept hair. He tasted the same, tasted like the rations right out of tins that had been custom during their war, his mouth a hot, plush thing against hers until he sighed and Diana used that to her advantage to allow her tongue to sway with his.

For how long they remained like that, knees trembling, knocking together, holding each other up by sheer force of will, mouths getting swollen from the exchange of nips and long, long indulgent tastes, she had no idea. When they parted for more than the quick, necessary sip of oxygen, Diana was already speaking, low and soft: “‘ _What I want and all my days I pine for is to go back to my house and see my day of homecoming. And if some god batters me far out on the wine-blue water, I will endure it, keeping a stubborn spirit inside me, for already I have suffered much and done much hard work on the waves and in the fighting._ ’” She could not make herself move more than a hair’s breadth away from his lips, flushing with a great deal of pride at his wrecked hair, his red mouth, the blood that had filled the circles of his cheeks.

If she had to name his expression, she’d have called it enamored. “That a line of your friend Cleo?”

“No,” Diana said, tender as the hands that held her close. “Homer.”

“He did the Odyssey, right?”

“Precisely.” Her own journey had spanned millennium where Odysseus’s was all of twenty years and yet, through all the heartache and the pain, the temptation and the devastation, the one home she never believed she would have the chance to see again stood in the circle of her arms. "Penelope had thought her beloved to be lost at sea, but Odysseus returned to her. She never wavered in her affection, never thought to." 

"It had a happy ending, right?" he pressed, gaze steady, warm as the summer sun. She forgot all definition of the word _cold_ with him near. "I mean, after everything, they deserved that much." 

"Yes," she agreed, nudging his hair off his forehead. It had slipped to the far corners of Diana's mind how stubborn it was, slanting a grin up at him when his bangs flopped immediately back into place. "We do. But this is only the beginning—we have much ahead of us, still. We have _everything_ to look forward to. Rest assured newspapers and breakfast haven't changed very much." 

"That's good," Steve said, looking just as dopey with love as Diana felt. "We're on the same page." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on Tumblr @ fypoedameron
> 
> I know I told one user that I wasn't going to bring Steve Trevor back, but that was before I walked in, sobbed profusely, and left Wonder Woman knowing I could never NOT bring him back. He is too good for this world and wondertrev deserves far more time together- this was me giving them their opportunity. More works to come. I'm such a tool omg. I love you all. Without the sweetest of comments, I never could have finished this. Thank you, I love you *crashes through your computer to hug you* Keep on the look out for more works in this universe! I plan to fill in the void between Avengers and Civil War (without, yanno, the events of that sadness fest) as well as Spider-Man: Homecoming!
> 
> December 5th, 2017: You guys rock. When I started out writing this piece, I never imagined the response it would receive. Know that I am not neglecting writing a second part to this work, but I'm in my first year of college and I am just about to start finals week. Once that's over, I'll basically have a full month to just kick back and create! Know that I am thankful for each and every single one of you for giving The Odyssey your time and that I love you all very much. I wish each of you warmth and strength in these trying times. Thank you.

**Author's Note:**

> CLIFFHANGERRRRRR i swear this has a happy happy HAPPY ending. 
> 
> Notes: Luxembourg was occupied by the Nazis during the war, but the liquidation process began in September of 44', and though it's not explicitly said, this fic takes place at the start of winter.
> 
> Comment what you think so far, validate me with your sweet kudos, and if you'd like, hit me up on [Tumblr](http://sgtbxrnes.co.vu/)! :)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cover art for "The Odyssey" by buckyjerkbarnes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12519520) by [Lovesfic (me23)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/me23/pseuds/Lovesfic)




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